


Devil in a Fast Car

by thatgaywizard



Series: Wingrove/Harchester [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016), Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Banter, Billy is Alive, Boys who cry, Classic Cars, Classic Rock, Crowley Being Crowley, Daddy Issues, Denim Bois, Drinking and Smoking, I GUESS THIS IS TURNING INTO A GOT DAMN SLOW BURN, Leather Jackets, M/M, Time Travel, UST, and eventually some very raw kinky sex and also tender sex, attitude problems, bars and bar fights, billy deserved a hero that loved him enough to save him, but don't wanna show it, classic Dean, eventually they cry while fucking I'm not gonna lie to you, guns and knives, i have feelings about this, macho posturing, repressed homosexual desires, scenes take place in 2012 and eventually the 80s, strangers to enemies to friends to lovers, thick eyelashes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-02-23 09:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23009629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgaywizard/pseuds/thatgaywizard
Summary: Something stranger than most supernatural things is happening and Dean finds himself high tailing it to the state of hell hounds, old gods, psychotic fairies, and apparently something new, something that doesn't belong to this world. All the while he can't seem to uncross his path with a stranger out of place and time, a stranger with great hair and a even bigger demon problem than Dean's. And whether they like it or not they are going to need each other's help to get through this unfolding horror show and come out the other side intact, but breaking down each other's boundaries is proving somehow harder than hunting monsters.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Billy Hargrove, Dean/Billy, Harchester, Wingrove - Relationship
Series: Wingrove/Harchester [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1651864
Comments: 22
Kudos: 30





	1. Devil in a Fast Car

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure where I'm going but have a general idea and mostly just here to indulge in the compounding thrill of Billy and Dean's daddy issues, machismo, tough guy acting, possession trauma, and secret angry crying, all combined into one spicy burrito of repressed homosexual love. Maybe some flayed sex and shaky confessions and time travel.

All roads led to Indiana. 

At least it sure as hell seemed that way. Maybe it was the way the crossroads and railways ran across that state, but the amount of bullshit Dean had found and hunted (or been hunted by) in that seemingly unimpressive chunk of the U.S. could fill a goddamn travel guide. It wasn’t a trip he’d be recommending to anyone soon. 

The wild goose chase had begun in Maine after rumors had reached Sam and Dean. Nothing substantial. Some strange activity in the woods, a weird creature someone said they had seen, all hearsay. There was one thing that was definitely genuine however, and that was that at least two people had been gruesomely torn up in a park outside the Hundred Mile Wilderness. One was a kid, the other a jogger. The thing about the Hundred Mile Wilderness- apart from it’s Winnie the Pooh ass sounding name- was that it was exactly where Purgatory had chewed Dean up and spit him out, which meant this couldn’t just be a coincidence...unless it was. There was a lot of _wilderness_ after all, and what else was lurking in there was anyone's guess, but it still warranted closer inspection.

He was already on a case one state over when he finally elected to check it out. Sam was against the idea of Dean going by himself but he was twice as far away. He told Dean if he was gonna do it to just make sure he stayed in contact.

The police gave Dean barely any more than he would have figured out on his own. The victims had nothing in common that anyone could tell. The sheer animal brutality of the murders were disturbing, the bodies were ripped open like they had been attacked by some kind of werewolf or some minuscule Dune worm from a Frank Herbert novel, there was nothing telling that he recognized. 

“They’re saying it could have been a bear,” the sheriff told him. 

“Yeah. That’s probably all this is.”

That was definitely not all this was.

There was only one witness, someone who had been driving by the playground after the attack in time to see whatever the thing was that did this run off into the woods. Dean tracked the witness to his home. He worked his way in with careful sympathy. The witness was a man in his fifties, he lived alone. He was the skeptical type, no one believed him. He ‘knew how crazy it sounded’ and he didn’t want to talk about it. 

He did though. They always did eventually.

He told Dean it had been on all fours, reptilian- _alien_ even. He had no idea what it was and had only caught a distant glance at it before finding the body. As Dean was walking out the door the guy stopped him.

“Agent Brooks...” he looked understandably discomfited. “I wasn’t the only one. The police said I was the only witness but there was another guy…”

“Another guy?”

“Yeah. He was parked in a car by the playground. He was just sitting in his car when I got there- the only reason I noticed him at all was 'cus of the car. It was a nice car. An oldie. A dodge, from the seventies probably. Not something you see on the road too often.”

“Huh,” Dean said thoughtfully.

“When I- after I- after I saw the body I came back to call the police and he was gone. Car was still there but he wasn’t in it. Don’t know if it matters but-”

“-Yeah thanks.” Dean nodded. “Every detail counts.” 

And so he was left to investigate further on his own, Sammy wouldn’t approve but he also wouldn’t know. He geared up and went to the site of the first killing, the playground on the outskirts of town close to the woods. The second victim had been on a trail nearby. He investigated the area around the park, the play structures and their moat of wood chips. There was no one around. He didn’t find anything, not out in the open, not at first.

Once he breached the tree line and headed down the trail he could see where the police had put up yellow tape and for whatever reason had not removed it all yet. 

He had a kind of sixth sense for things that were off at this point in his life and something was very clearly off. The air was different in there. It was an overcast day and the light was barely penetrating through the thick fir trees, but there was something else, like a cold draft that shouldn’t have been there, and not a physical one. 

Pale flecks like dust mottled the air as he left the path and crept deeper into the trees. He had never been here specifically but it was similar to the part of the wood he had been in. It reminded him of something he couldn’t remember at first but the stillness was what made him think of a photograph, as if everything around him was frozen in time and he was the only thing moving. He had to reach a finger out and touch the frond of a fern in order to make sure he wasn’t right about that. It shuddered at his touch, bobbing slowly in the loamy air. So, that was normal at least. On a tree nearby he noticed some kind of sap clinging to the trunk. On closer inspection it was some sort of residue, not sap- something weirder and more clear. The thought 'ectoplasm' came to mind but he disregarded it. There was no reason to think that, yet.

The atmosphere felt an awful lot like the last rift he experienced, the strangeness- the wrongness in the air. Like a freaky astral residue that made the hairs on his neck stand up. He wasn't going to go any further without backup. These trees went on forever. He turned around and cut a quick path back to the clearing, happy to be rid of the feeling of the empty poltergeist wood staring at his back.

When he was comfortably back in the Impala he drove to a nearby lodge where backpackers usually stayed, just to ask if they’d seen anything strange recently. The place was like a wood cabin with very few modern amenities. It smelled like sawdust.

A couple- a woman with shaggy short hair and a guy with a beard that didn’t look like it’d been tended to in months- eagerly told him about the man who showed up last week.

“We almost called the cops,” the guy said.

“We didn’t know what to do,” the woman added.

“He was a mess.”

“Really just...strange.” 

Dean could see they believed it. They were a talkative pair and he didn't have to press them hard. “Strange how ?”

“Well, he was like, upset? And obviously freaked out.”

“He wouldn't talk to anyone.” 

“Except, when he got here he asked-”

“Where am I?” She interrupted her boyfriend. “He asked us where he was.”

“Yeah, we thought he had been kidnapped or something you know? People go missing in the woods sometimes and you never hear about them again.” 

“But not people like him,” she said. 

“People like who?” Dean needed them to get to the details already.

“Like, men? _Young_ guys? _Fit_ guys. It’s usually old people and women…” she looked away and shook her head as if it was a shame.

Dean had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. “And then what? He showed up and? Where did he go? Any description besides young and fit?“

“He had a mullet,” the guy said.

Dean’s eyebrows went up. “...Okay.”

“He was cute,” the girl said with a little shrug. Her boyfriend gave her a look from the side that she didn’t see. “His shirt was all ripped up. Yeah, he was a real mess. I think he said something about getting to Indiana.” 

“Did he have any distinguishing marks? Any…” _claws, fangs, glowing eyes?_ This is where it helped when people would just offer up the information themselves. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

“You mean, apart from the mullet?” The boyfriend said.

Dean closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. 

“I don’t think so.”

“Alright. Thanks.” 

The hippie backpacking duo it turned out hadn’t been the only one to spot his mystery man, there was another hiker there who claimed he saw the stranger come in too. He said the guy asked the hiker how far away Indiana was, specifically, _Hawkins_. “I tried to show him on google maps but- the guy was a huge dick. He stole my friggin bag- shoved me into the wall! Pretty sure he was fucked up on something, doubt he ever made it to wherever he was going.”

And so that had settled it. Once he had exhausted all other leads on the monsters and come up empty handed there had only been one tail left to follow. Dean was going to endure one more long road trip back to Indiana.


	2. Waking Dreams

_Everything was dark..._

_silence..._

_nothing..._

_then- a rushing movement against skin, suffocating moisture, web-like substance dragging across his face. The dark place was there and then it wasn’t. A portal opened up, and a tunnel-_

_suffocating, struggling to get out-_

_light. Wavering rings of light. So far out of reach. Fighting to be closer. Water. Burning lungs. At last the surface, air, a light so dull and so blinding-_

_And finally, wet insubstantial ground. Clawing, dragging, coughing._

_Fluttering vision. Gray tree branches, gray sky, frosty ground beneath, everything different than what it had been for the last...what felt like years, felt like half a lifetime..._

He startled awake.

Had he fallen asleep? A horn was blaring and bright lights were in his eyes. He gripped the steering wheel of the car instinctively, felt the swerve pull him. The road was in front of him and the sound of screeching tires behind him and he didn’t know what had happened or where he was but it grew quiet... as his breathing slowed and he regained his bearings, felt the smooth upholstery of the cold steering wheel under his hands. Flashes of things seared through his mind; the demodogs, the woods, faces he didn’t recognize, pieces of Hawkins. He looked down at the passenger seat where a wallet and a knife lay. The wallet was stolen, he knew that. He didn't know where the knife was from...

It was dark out and the car had no clock. There was no concept of time and it was so fucking cold. It must have been winter, or fall? He tried to turn on the car heater but it refused to work. He twisted the knobs this way and that way but nothing happened. What was this piece of shit? Where was _his_ car? 

His car. 

That’s right. He was _looking_. 

He wasn’t supposed to be here. 

Thin illuminated lines of red and blue on the dash marked the gas tank at half full. He drove until he hit a gas station, the way vaguely familiar to him like something from a dream. The wallet only had twenty dollars in it and the part of him that seemed to know what the hell was going on knew that wasn’t enough to go far.

Mr. Hartford had owned the gas station at Jennings Avenue for going on fifty something years now. His father had owned the station before him. He had been one of the first people in the area to set up when Hawkins had started to become a real town and he knew all the locals and the locals knew him. Most evenings he ran the little gas station and market on his own, and tonight he was behind the till doing a crossword when he heard the bell on the door jingle. His memory wasn’t what it used to be but when he looked up he could have swore it was-

_“Billy? Billy Hargrove?”_

A man, maybe in his mid twenties, had walked in a moment earlier and stood staring at the newspaper rack, he looked up at him like he hadn't expected anyone to be here. 

The old man chuckled to himself. “Nah, can’t be. You look the spittin’ image of a boy I knew. Used to come in here with his friends and rob me blind. Little shits,” he muttered the last part to himself with a hint of bitter amusement. “He died a long time ago though. Ahh, what am I saying?" He shook his head. "You’ll have to pardon my ramblings. Anythin’ I can help you with?”

The young man didn’t speak, only continued to give him that peculiar look.

“Everything alright there, son? Been on the road for a long time, hm?”

“What happened to him?”

“What’s that?”

“What happened to the boy?”

“Oh, well...there was a fire I think at the old mall, lotta folk got hurt. Afraid he wasn’t one of ‘em that made it out.” The young man was strangely intent on him still. He looked the way those truckers did when they came in early in the morning some days, red eyed and haggard from driving all night.

“Do you know what happened to his family?” 

“Oh gee,” the old man gazed up towards the ceiling, recollecting, “let’s see...well his pa stuck around for a bit but the sister, well I stopped seeing her come ‘round shortly after she got old enough to drive. They used to drive that, ah, that little blue Camaro.” 

“She kept his car?” The stranger asked quietly.

“Oh no. It was a wreck. They sold it- or gave it to Ralphie, the feller who owns that little auto-body place downtown...you sure you’re alright?” 

The tired man seemed to sag as he gave Mr. Hartford a sad smile. “It’s been a long night. Took a wrong turn. Someone stole...just about everything out of my car. I’m just not sure how I’m even going to get where I need to go without the money I had in my wallet.”

“I’m real sorry to hear that. Where were you headed?" 

“Well I was... on my way to visit my mother. She’s in the hospital a few states away.” 

Mr. Hartford looked at the stranger, not suspecting the lie that he told. His face was tired and weary. “Not really your week is it? Hm, you know what? I know a guy owns that little motel down the road. I bet I could convince him to let you stay a night. Give you a chance to get your affairs in order if you like?”

“I couldn’t ask that of you,” the young man said modestly.

“Ehh don’t worry about it. This time of year, we’re lucky if we get even one traveler passing through. Not much brings people 'round here unless they were unlucky enough to be born here.” He chuckled again.

“You’re too kind.” He gave Mr.Hartford a charming smile that fell flat as soon as Mr. Hartford wasn't looking, but the old man picking up his phone to make his charity call never noticed.


	3. Maybe He's Born with it, Maybe it's a Perm...

Two days later the Impala rolled into the nowhere town of Hawkins Indiana. It had been a bitch of a drive but Dean had done much more greuling road trips. On his way over he had used his sources to run a check for any stolen vehicles matching the description the first witness had given him back in Maine- sure enough some poor bastard had lost his 1970 Dodge the week prior. It all tracked a little too easily. A set up wasn't entirely out of the equation and he made sure to keep that information near the forefront of his mind. Turned out there had also been a very similar death only a day prior, but it was buried deep and the local media hadn’t reported it. A fellow hunter from the area was aware of it. Same description of the attack wounds, no suspects, and the hunter didn’t know what the heck he was dealing with either.

He found the car by chance while just driving around looking for a place to hole up for the night. He guessed that had to be the one upside of being in a small town, not many places to hide. The motel was a crusty place on the side of an underpopulated highway. He was almost disappointed. He had been hoping to maybe relax for a while, take a shower, eat something at least. He checked in at the front desk and requested a room that had a clear view of the suspect car and then he went in and spent the next hour and half incredibly bored and hungry.

At fifteen minutes past eight Dean finally heard the sound of the old Dodge Charger start up on the other side of the lot. He looked up in time to see someone with blondish hair in the driver seat and not much else before they reversed carelessly out of the motel’s parking area. He waited only long enough to let them get on to the highway before he jogged out and started up the Impala to give pursuit.

The Charger eventually led him to a bar, which he thought was a bit anticlimactic. The place was equally as lackluster as the motel, no sign, just a door in a run down building with tiny windows. He drove past as slow as possible as a man in a leather jacket got out of the stolen car, closed the door carelessly, and went inside. Dean parked a little ways down the street and a few minutes later he was inside.

But what the hell was he looking at? His first thought was vamp, which would have explained a few things, but no this thing was too easy to track. Vamps covered their trail unless they were itching for a fight and this thing- this thing didn’t seem to be hiding from anyone- including the law, not at 8pm in a stolen car in a bad part of town. And he- or it- didn’t seem to be looking for trouble, not yet anyway, or maybe that part had already happened. 

Dean made his way casually to a table in the corner and sat down pretending to look at the slim menu he pulled out from between a bottle of Worcester sauce and a plastic squeeze container of ketchup.

The guy, or whatever it was, stood unassumingly with his elbows resting on the bar in a black motorcycle jacket and blue jeans looking for all the world like a regular biker. If Dean had wandered in here drunk, or very drunk, and if this guy’s thighs had been a little slimmer, he would have mistook him for a woman from behind because that hair- Jesus he knew guys with mullets, it was just something that happened when you frequented as many truck stops and roadside bars as he did, but none of them were permed like it was the fucking eighties with that rat's nest of curls. And if it wasn't a perm, he sure didn’t know anyone with the balls to wear their hair like that in a place like this. 

A middle aged brunette waitress came over to him looking like she was already over the evening and it was only just beginning. “Can I get you started with something?”

“Uh, yeah, you still serving food?”

“We are, would you like to see the full menu?”

"Sure." He was mostly stalling for time but he also wasn't going to say no to a burger, not right now.

“Something to drink while you wait?”

He wasn't planning on drinking but he had to make it convincing. “I’ll have a jack and coke, thanks.” He gave her a perfunctory smile.

She left and Dean looked back at the...whatever. 

Guy could just be a demon. Plain and simple.

But Dean’s life was never plain, and it sure as hell wasn't simple.

The waitress appeared at Dean’s elbow more suddenly than he expected. She set his drink on the wooden table and glanced at him. Then she glanced at the guy at the bar. And then she looked back at Dean with a smirk. “I could send him a drink, say it's from an admirer.”

Dean reeled back in his seat a couple inches and stared at her. Man, she had balls- and no regard for her job apparently. No one had ever made a jab like that even back in California, not even when he _had_ been furtively admiring someone’s backside. 

“I’m just kidding.” She smacked him softly on the shoulder with the menu, it made a soft swak against the leather of his jacket, then set it on the table.

Dean faltered between saying ‘it’s not like that’ or rising to her joke with ‘that obvious, huh?’ She left before he could decide on either, saying “Give ya a minute to look it over.”

Maybe he would have a little bit of that drink after all. 

The stranger had turned and now Dean could see him from the side as he watched the tv raptly. He sipped whatever dark liquid was in his glass without looking away from the screen posted at the top end of the bar. In his other hand was a cigarette glowing hotly, adding to the haze of the dim room. He took a drag between drinking and staring at the tv. Dean could tell the guy had an attitude even from here.

He could also tell that he had a knife.

A big one too from the look of it. Dean could see the sheath tucked up under his jacket in the back, not completely hidden but just enough to slip under the radar. 

Inevitably Dean gave way to the siren call of bar food and while he waited for his order for the next ten or fifteen minutes his quarry did nothing particularly interesting. The guy seemed to finally lose interest in the television which was now running a basketball game and started looking at something on the counter Dean couldn’t see much of, some kind of magazine or newspaper from what he could tell. 

He found that he’d drank almost half the jack and coke, despite his prior reservation and was glad to see his food when the waitress finally came out with it. She was only five feet from the table and he watched in horror as the plate dropped out of her hands and the burger slipped into free fall. She looked transfixed at something on the other side of the room and began screaming bloody murder. The plate smashed loudly to the ground and shattered. 

He swung around along with everyone else in the room to see something busting into the bar through the front door, and for a second his heart quit. At first glance, on all fours, it looked like a goddamn hell hound. He’d been chased to Indiana by those bastards and torn to ribbons once. He hadn’t even considered that they could be an option with the current case. To his almost relief and surprise it went straight for the guy at the bar with its weird predatory walk. Long reptilain fingers with enormous talons clipping against the wood floor, looking too humanlike in shape.

Dean was on his feet in a second pulling his gun as everyone else ran from the room or staggered up drunkenly and fell over in the process.

The guy with the mullet stood up straight, squared his feet, and took out the knife. Dean had been right, it was a machete. The stranger didn’t look nearly as surprised as everyone else to see the grotesque beast in there. In fact he looked like he had almost been expecting it. There was cold fury in his face as he watched it come at him. 

Dean leveled off four shots into the thing before it could get any closer, and then another three when it didn't go down. It shook and howled a high pitch scream unlike anything animal or human but kept coming. The guy went at it and it reared up on two legs, frighteningly human-like all of a sudden -accept the head split open like a giant venus fly trap with shark teeth- and then the he was kicking it to the ground, he stomped on it with his motorcycle boot -and in a quick and brutal swing -severed the thing's head completely from its body. The thing on the ground continued to writhe and flop around even headless until if eventually went still...mostly.

Dean kept his arms outstretched, gun at the ready. He took a couple steps closer as the stranger wiped his face with his arm, wiped off the blood- or whatever it was- on his cheek, leaving a black smear across his skin.

He gave Dean, the only person in the room still standing, a quick glance. Dean knew then for sure that the guy wasn’t human. Not completely. There was something in his eyes, something strange. He took a few steps backwards to the bar, picked up his drink and still smoking cigarette. He downed the liquor, put the cigarette in his mouth, stepped over the monster carcass, and left through the front door.

He was halfway back to his stolen car when Dean got outside.

“Hey!” The word was a command to stop. But the stranger ignored him. Dean shouted at him again getting no more response this time either.

Once he’d slammed the car door shut he looked at Dean through the open window with his arm hooked over the side as the car roared to life. He sized Dean up with a look and then he flicked his cigarette out the window and peeled out onto the street. 

Dean watched the car veer off beyond sight, engine loud, with narrow eyed irritation as the cigarette on the ground continued to smoke. _“Son of a bitch.”_

Back inside, the bartender was leaning over the counter looking at the body of the monster. No one seemed brave enough to approach it even though it appeared dead. He went over and looked at the head. This was some messed up shit. The disturbing thing was that it didn’t match with anything he normally came across, no mythological similarities, nothing folklore like, but there was something about it that tickled the back of his memory. He rolled the head over with the bottom of his shoe. The fleshy petals flopped over. “Somebody’s got one hell of a freaky greenhouse around here,” he said. The busser looked at him in mute disbelief.

“What do we do?” The bartender asked.

“Well, you guys wouldn’t be able to remake that burger would you?”


	4. The Camaro

The feel of the old car brought him back to himself. He felt more like a real person than he had in an eternity. He clutched the slender steering wheel, wrapped his fingers around it and squeezed. The car was in prime condition. The leather seats had aged a little but the cigarette burn on the left side of the passenger seat was still there which meant even the upholstery was still original. The engine had a little grumble too it now that hadn’t been there when he drove it during high school, other than that it was flawless. He almost felt bad for taking it, the guy who owned it now had obviously taken care of the car. He owed him one. Someday. 

The owner, Ralph, had been confused when he offered to trade. Billy hadn’t given him a choice in the end. He took the keys when Ralph went into the back of the shop. They were hanging up on the wall along with a dozen others that belonged to cars in the automobile garage and it was obvious to him which set of keys belonged to the Camaro. _His_ Camaro.

He dropped the keys to the Charger on the sidewalk outside and slid into the Camaro like an old lover. 

“Did you miss me, sweetheart?” he crooned.

The car growled like a hungry beast, music to his ears. He pressed in the clutch and shifted into gear, rolling out onto the street like he’d never left. He was halfway down the block when the shop owner ran outside and started shouting. He intended to be long gone before the police could find him. 

But he had to make one more stop. His step mother still owned the old house on Cherry Lane, if he had anything left, that’s where it would be. 


	5. Home, or Something Like It

“I don’t know what it is I’m looking at here,” Dean said into the phone. He was sitting at the table in a different motel now with his laptop open and a burrito half unwrapped. The crew at the bar had in fact not been keen on serving him food after the little showdown with the monster, so he'd had to improvise. “These things, they’re weird but you can kill ‘em. This guy gives me the heebee geebees though. I don’t know what his deal is. ”

Sam’s voice traveled through the speaker: _”I don’t know Dean it sounds an awful lot like possession”_

“Maybe. There’s something I can’t quite figure out. It’s like I’ve seen those things before, a long time ago, but I don’t know where.”

_“Like, on a case?”_

“No. No this was...nevermind.” He didn’t feel like saying what he really thought. That it was Hell, if he’d seen them anywhere, that was it. 

_“Hey Dean, I think I might have found something in dad’s journal. I mean, it doesn’t give an exact location but it’s marked IN and there’s a contact; Chief Hopper. Maybe it’s related? But Dean…”_

Dean could hear the tinge of confusion in Sam’s voice. 

_“It’s marked the exact year and month that mom died, November 1983. I don’t get it. Does the name Starcourt ring a bell?”_

“Starcourt? No. What the hell is that? A skating rink?”

_“I don’t know it doesn’t say anything else.”_

“Alright, I’m gonna do some more looking around, try and find the source, let me know if you hear anything else.”

_“Yeah.”_

“Later.” 

The police department of Hawkins was a modest show. He had a feeling they weren’t blessed with a very large force in this little town. Their senior officer turned out to be a man only in his forties who pretended to be too busy to speak with Dean, but after Dean had waited around long enough he apparently couldn’t pretend to look busy anymore and invited him into his office. The place was old fashioned, like everything in this town, with one wall entirely brick and the other walls covered in some seventies wood panelling.

“What can I do for you?” he asked Dean.

“Uh, good afternoon, Sergeant...” Dean looked at the name placard on the yellowing desk, “Brown. I was hoping maybe you could tell me a bit about Jim Hopper, I believe he worked here once.” Dean seated himself in the small chair across from the sergeant.

Brown looked at Dean with an impressive poker face. “And why do you need to know about Jim Hopper?”

“Actually he’s an old friend of my dad’s. Um, my dad passed away not too long ago and I just had some questions I was hoping-”

“Jim Hoppers dead.”

Dean looked at him wide-eyed, but it wasn’t a complete surprise, he’d had a suspicion that was the case.

“Well, technically he didn’t die, he went missing. No one ever figured out what happened to him. That was before my time. Heard he was a good guy though, uh, good police chief. A real magnum pi type.”

“Maybe you can help me then with something else.” Dean decided it was a good time to pull out his FBI badge. People in these small towns almost never looked twice at it and neither did this guy. “I’ve been trying to follow up on some of the strange deaths that have been going on. The ones supposedly being committed by animals, big, wild animals-” 

“Christ not again,” the officer sighed.

“What do you mean not again?”

He examined Dean from under his thick eyebrows. “Look, it’s been a nightmare this week trying to keep things under wraps. This cougar attack or whatever it was has got people riled up. The witnesses have been going around telling people crazy stories about monsters. Monsters!” He shook his head and laughed once.

“And," Dean drew the word out slowly, “is there any truth to those stories?”

“Did you come in here to ask me if monsters are real?”

Dean chuckled. “No. No sir, I did not.” 

He took a deep breath and exhaled out his nose. He seemed hesitant to tell Dean what he was about to say next. “There’s a lot more weird shit that’s gone on in Hawkins than anyone is ready to admit to. I’m not really even supposed to talk about it. After the Starcourt incident it became just a bunch of old wives tales. But something bad happened here back in the 80’s. Real bad. They said it was a fire but…” he shrugged, slumping back into the metal arms of his office chair. “I don’t know. It was all before my time.”

“Starcourt?” Dean remembered the very particular name.

“It’s the old shopping mall. Condemned now, but it was a popular joint back in the day from what I’ve been told.”

The radio crackled to life. Dean heard the scratchy voice say something like 

\--10-41 Cherry Lane, residence 4819. Requesting backup. Over.--

“I need to see to this.” He waved Dean away. 

“Of course. I’ll see myself out.”

He was halfway out of the room when he heard the man say, “Whaddya mean aliens? -God, not you too, Frank!”

Dean didn’t wait to hear the rest. He made it briskly to the car and was on the way to the address almost as fast as the two swat cars that sped past him with blaring sirens. 

The scene Dean arrived at was far beyond getting underway. The house was a one story mid century home, probably two or three bedrooms, with a large front and backyard that stretched on however far you wanted since the other residences nearby were few and far apart, and the majority of the area was brushy countryside and farmland.

Shattered glass was all over the road from a window on one of the cop cars out front. He heard gunshots before he pulled over but when he finally had a clear view of the street and the house there was no one around. He grabbed the sawed off shotgun with the silver bullets from under his passenger seat and got out slowly. The gutters were thick with wet leaves accumulating in the cold late Fall weather. He crept up to the house, bypassing the crooked crumbling steps, and walked across the weedy grass, cautious. Somewhere off in the woods he could hear rustling noises, the uncomfortable type. 

He wasn’t going through the front door, on the off chance something was inside. He crept around to the side of the house, to the cement carport. It was lower than the foundation of the house and he could pass beneath the windows unseen. Up next to the back door he peered into the window, it was hard to see past the hazy lace curtain. There was no movement inside. He could hear something, a little scuffling- and then running- but not inside. 

One of the police officers was charging through the trees. As soon as he got close he started screaming for Dean to open the door. And Dean could see one of the monsters was after him. 

Dean tried the doorknob, surprisingly it turned and the door opened easily. Unlocked. The police officer was panting, scrambling up the carport. Dean fired off one round after another at the demon dog, no, -dogs. Two of them. “Shit! Go go go go go,” he chanted as the officer reached him and they scrambled inside and slammed the door. The officer was too winded to even say anything, he stood doubled over with his hands on his knees. Dean locked the door and walked back into the hallway, heart racing, the cop following behind. It wasn’t going to be long before those things were in here. 

“This place got a basement- a cellar? Anything?” Dean said to no one in particular. Suddenly feeling incredibly stupid for coming out here without backup. He walked into the kitchen and Dean stopped in his tracks- the flustered cop ran directly into him from behind. “What-” he said, then looked past Dean and realized why he had stopped. “Who the hell…”

There was Dean’s guy. Standing in the middle of the kitchen. Dirty blonde hair, leather jacket, disturbingly vacant yet aggressive expression...when he turned to them there was no recognition in his face at the sight of Dean being there. He looked like they were interrupting him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dean demanded, not sure if he was supposed to be squaring off right now or not.

“...You’re in my house,” the stranger said tonelessly. His voice wasn’t what Dean had expected. Deeper maybe.

The sound of glass being smashed and monsters trampling and scudding across wood floors filled the room. They were coming. 

Everyone turned to look at the hallway. The cop moved himself very quickly to the other side of the room. Beyond the kitchen counter, behind the stranger.

Dean was poised, shotgun ready, but they came in fast. And Dean found himself backed into the corner of the kitchen in a second. 

The room was violent chaos, full of snarling and gunshots, and for a moment he actually thought- this is it . I’m gonna to die in bumfuck Indiana. Again.

But he didn’t. It took a second for him to realize that the stranger had come to his rescue, maybe not intentionally, eviscerating the monster just like he had the last with his knife, and then he stood off against the next one. This one did not attack. Its alien head was closed, shut up, teeth hidden. The stranger was staring at, challenging, bearing down on the thing. He took a step towards it and the thing was...hesitant? It seemed to cower and then back away. Then it ran. Down the hallway it disappeared. He heard the sound of it crawling out the window again. 

The stranger turned around and tried to walk past the kitchen but before Dean could even ask what the hell that had been about -the cop raised his gun.

He was trembling, sputtering, shaky. He was staring at the stranger with a wild terrified look. “D-d-don’t move!” he shouted. 

“Whoa whoa, hold on” Dean said, hands outstretched quickly, placating. 

“You saw, he’s -he’s one of them! Look at him!” He was hysterical. 

Before anyone could do anything else the stranger swung hard and the gun went flying out of the cop's hands, it hit the other side of the room with a thud that sounded like it dented the wall- and then he grabbed the cop by the neck and lifted him off the ground. 

Dean, for lack of better options, picked up the small table next to him in the walkway and smashed it over the guy’s back. It splintered into pieces, not a very hardy piece of furniture to begin with, but it got his attention. It didn’t stop him though, and he grabbed the cop with his other hand and threw him through the window.

Dean was fairly certain the cop was gonna survive that, a little worse for wear perhaps, provided he hadn’t landed on anything too bad- and then he was back to worrying about his own ass because now the attention was on him. And for the first time he got a real good look at what he was dealing with. Surprisingly, the guy was shorter than him, just a few inches, and younger than he had thought too, maybe around Dean’s age. The words of the backpacking hippie rang through his mind, _he was cute,_ and Dean almost laughed. Maybe under different circumstances. This guy was something but he wasn’t sure it was that, and he clearly wasn’t bothered by the cold weather in that outfit despite a great portion of his skin being exposed. 

He stared at Dean through thick eyelashes with a glassy, unblinking, expression Dean couldn’t translate. And then he walked towards him, not in a hurry, but not slowly either and Dean did the only thing left to think of. 

The holy water splashed across the guy’s face and neck and dripped down his chest into his open shirt. He went unfazed by it.

“Heh. Had to try,” Dean said with almost a chuckle and then swallowed hard. He was out of bullets. He pulled out his own knife, ready to fight if he had to. Dean swung when the guy finally got too close- steely fingers closed around his wrist instantly, impossibly strong for someone this size. The man’s other hand closed around his throat, and before they did Dean saw the black veins, black lines, running through the stranger’s skin, across his hands, like the black blood that had smeared across his face. He could see them on his neck and chest now too.

Dean was sinking. Being forced to his knees. Choking. 

“Why,” the stranger said, with a voice deep and severe, as Dean struggled, “are you following me?” He leaned over Dean with his empty hostile glare. Dean clutched at the hand on his neck. “I-” he tried to speak, but it was nearly impossible. His face was getting hot, tingling from the blood pressure- “I just...wanted...to help,” he choked out.

His vision was starting to prickle at the edges but it looked like for a moment…the stranger’s eyes shifted, whatever was there in the forefront receded and something new came forward. His gaze seemed to look through Dean, something like recognition took shape in his eyes, as if suddenly seeing his surroundings for the first time. 

And Dean noticed his eyes were blue...

But the hesitation only lasted a few seconds. In a voice so low Dean could feel it he said- 

“ _Stay away from me_.”

Each word a driving blow, close enough his breath ghosted across Dean’s skin. And then he let go, shoving Dean back against the wall in the process. 

Dean gulped in the air, continued to kneel on the wooden floor gasping, as the man turned his back to him and walked out of the house, his boots crunching over the broken glass, leaving footprints from the black green blood across the floor. Eventually he heard the familiar sound of a muscle car starting up in the distance and wondered why he hadn’t noticed the car when he'd arrived. 


	6. Otherworldlies

He hadn’t seen the stranger’s car when he got here because it hadn’t been there. The car he saw driving off when he got to the window was something completely different. It was still just as loud and just as vintage. Why anyone would trade in for this one though was another mystery. At least the old dodge had been valuable.

It was an understatement to say this whole event had played out favorably. He was prepared to put down a wild card, because it had come to that.

He had most of the necessities in the trunk of his car but he did have to hit up a corner store to buy a few candles, however he didn’t have to go far in this town to find a nicely deserted crossroad to set up at. The spell wasn’t gonna be perfect but what the hell was anymore? Intention sometimes was the most important aspect you brought to the table when it came to the hocus pocus stuff, and he had a hell of a lot of intention about this. He stood in the middle of the crossroads and waited. Sigil outline on the ground, 3 candles lit in the middle of the day. No one in sight to ask what the hell he was doing, just overgrown blacktop and dusty gravel. Until-

“ _Hello, Dean.”_

The voice came from behind him. Demons. If they had a chance to pop up behind you, even when you knew they were coming, they’d take it.

“Didn’t expect to be seeing you again so soon,” came the instantly recognizable brogue of one demon Crowley.

“Feelings mutual,” Dean told him, turning to look at the erstwhile King of Hell in his pressed black suit. 

“Tell me, what has compelled you to seek out my company on this pleasant”- he looked up at the gray sky- “overcast, twiggy, backwater road? I can’t imagine you simply missed my charming smile.”

Dean wasn’t in the mood to waste words. He looked away from Crowley, went over to the back of the Impala, and dragged something very large inside a tarp out where Crowley could see it. He let it drop in front of the demon’s feet. The tarp fell open and the pleasantly fake smile left the demon’s face. “Where did you get that,” he said in a quiet sing-song voice as he stared at the headless monster.

Dean was satisfied to see it was enough to pique the demon’s interest. “Recognize it?”

“I do. And I should think you would too, thanks to your little field trip downstairs.”

Dean ignored the jab. “How’d it get here?”

“That’s the question isn’t it? Is that what you brought me here for?”

Dean didn’t answer, just stood there looking silently pissed off. 

Crowley considered him slyly. “Alright,” he said finally. “I am going to give this one to you pro-bono but only because the information you’ve presented here is actually useful to me.” He had his hands casually in his pockets.“Do you remember the place you saw it? The chasm, or channel, if you will?”

Dean remembered. The place further down. Like the Grand Canyon of Hell except it wasn’t Hell. It was something in passing you tried not to look at as they dragged you onward to your actual destination. 

“It’s not Hell and it’s not part of Purgatory either. It’s the place where the otherside _bleeds_ out,” he said this stretched-lipped through his teeth. “Your little angel friend has undoubtedly mentioned that time isn’t linear and space isn’t either, so as you can imagine there are other places, like Purgatory but less...near to this world. Cthulhu, Shoggoth etcetera, you’ve heard of those fellows?” He threw the names out casually as if they were people you might have met at a pub and not sci-fi monsters. “That’s _their_ place. And that chasm is where _their_ place intersects with _ours_.”

This naturally made Dean deeply uncomfortable, somehow, more uncomfortable than he already was most of the time. “Cthulhu? Really? Can we not do that?” He shook his head.

“Those aren’t technically their real names, but the devil is in the details. There’s some other folk you wouldn’t have heard of as well but that’s not important- I hope. These little fellows however-” he nodded toward Dean’s monster. “Think of them like raccoons. Naturally, you wouldn’t find them in a city, they’re woodland critters, but they get on well enough eating garbage and living in abandoned buildings alongside humans.”

“Okay, but that is not a raccoon.” Dean jabbed a finger at the creature on the ground. 

Crowley continued. “What I am trying to say is that they are compatible with _your_ world, even though they shouldn’t be here. It’s why they’re able to slip into the chasm, they’re able to crawl through the doggie door between hell and their world as they please, but they’ve never made it up here to my knowledge, not before.”

Surprise surprise. 

“Awesome.” Dean said. “So they finally made it out? I’ve been tracking them all the way from Maine-”

“The back door to purgatory,” Crowley said without missing a beat. “Except...only humans are allowed through that door, everything else requires a human host to escape.” 

They stared at one another.

Dean’s eyebrows drew together as his mind churned. 

“So...” Crowley said with finality, “where’s your _host_?”

The word _host_ made Dean’s skin crawl. He thought for a moment. He knew the answer, or at least was willing to wager he did. 

Crowley eyed the monster on the ground while Dean brooded over this. Then eventually Dean simply said, “How do we kill ‘em?” 

“These things? They’re just pests,” Crowley said offhandedly. “They’re not hard to kill. Although I could see how they could prove unpleasant for the regular run of the mill mortal. Fire will do it. They’re not fond of silver either but you’ll mostly just annoy them with that it can’t really hurt them. Usually I just,” he raised his fingers in a little snapping gesture which Dean had come to know as the Spontaneous Implosion Demon (or Angel) Trick. “These guys aren’t your _real_ problem though.” His Scottish accent hit the ‘r’ in a gritty way.

“Really? Would you care to enlighten me then?”

“They wouldn’t be here without a reason. They’re following someone’s orders.” He gave it a beat to let that sink in. “They aren’t self driven enough to hop over here of their own accord which means...you’ve got to find the line they're listening to and cut the cord before whoever's on the other end figures out how to get directions to this place. Even I’m not particularly keen on that happening. It makes things...messy. Makes my job more complicated. Find the breach Dean. Seal it. Cut off the source and all the vines will wither. “

“Jesus. Can you quit with the metaphors? How am I supposed to do any of that?”

“Use the book.” Crowley said as if it was obvious. “I know you’ve got it locked away in your little fort somewhere.” 

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, we actually have a whole lotta books. A whole friggin library in fact.”

“Dean, it’s a good thing you’re pretty because you’re not very smart.” He took a step closer, still looking offensively casual in his suit and shiny black shoes. “There’s only one book on this continent that has anything in it that will work on these otherworldlies.”

“You mean the Book of the Damned.” He didn’t phrase it as a question.

Crowley smiled furtively at him. “By the way if you want to catch up to your friend you should get over to Starcourt as soon as possible.”

“What?”

“Good luck, Dean.”

“Hold on a sec-” But there was nothing there anymore. Dean was alone in the middle of the road again. Alone with the decapitated monster. He sighed. “Great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley is still around because honestly I prefer it that way.


	7. Another Place in Time

_Was he dead?_

He was standing in the place he _had_ died. No memory of how he’d come to be there. He wasn’t sure if he was losing his mind or how much of it he even had left. All around him was the shell of what had once been a bustling trendy mall. Crumbled pillars, broken tiles, burnt and charred displays everywhere. 

He was damp with sweat, and maybe water from somewhere, his clothes were dirty, his body _ached_. Whatever he had been doing a minute ago he had no idea what it was but it had been physically taxing. He was exhausted. Where was everyone? All he knew was that he was looking for something.

No.

Not exactly...

 _He_ wasn’t looking. Something _inside_ him was looking. He had thought that he was looking for his family but he knew that wasn’t the reason he was here anymore, he was being driven to search and he didn’t know why. 

He found his way out of the mall, the walkways familiar but different, and staggered out into what was apparently night time. The last time he’d seen the sky it had been light gray, afternoon. The mall was placed a ways back from a freeway. The huge blacktop parking lot was overgrown with weeds and hidden by dirt but great swathes of it still remained visible. There was no one else in the vast shopping front except- 

whoever the fuck was leaning against the Camaro.

“Nice car,” the man said. “You steal this one too?”

He looked at him, he was dressed in practical utilitarian clothing, dark navy jacket, boots, and jeans. He remembered this face, a little too pretty for the machismo that the man exuded. For some reason he’d been there every time Billy had been lucid, and he also remembered that he'd had a gun every time as well.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

The man examined Billy shrewdly. “What were you looking for in there?”

Billy leered at him, this whole thing adding another layer of confusion for him.

“You were yelling _‘Where is it_ ?’...What’s ' _it'_?” 

Billy started towards his car, trying not to limp. There was a stabbing pain in his right knee he was now becoming aware of. “Get the hell off my car,” he said passionately. 

The man moved away from the car but continued to stand by the driver side door and Billy stopped in front of him, just an inch too far into his personal space, giving him a look that usually drove people back on its own. But it didn’t budge this guy. It was starting to drizzle and Billy’s skin was wet. He realized his jacket was sitting inside on the seat of the car and he was only wearing a thin cotton tank top. “Are you _following_ me?”

“Uh, bingo.”

Billy glared at him, waiting for more of an explanation.

“See these monster guys, they seem to follow you around like pets,” he gestured back and forth with his hand, “so I have a strong suspicion you and them are maybe just a little bit connected." His tone wasn’t lacking in sarcasm. “And I think you and I should have a little chat- unless of course you’d rather just choke me again, but uh, you’ll have to buy me a drink first.” He gave Billy a cheeky smile, then he eyed Billy’s arms and hands for some reason. “Looks like you’re a little low on mojo right now though so, I’ll take a rain-check.” 

The implication didn’t penetrate through the invisible pane of disorientation Billy felt like he was trapped behind. “Why do you give a shit?” 

“Because it’s my job.”

“What the _fuck_ does that mean?”

“It means people are dying and I’m here to do something about it.”

Billy let out a short chuckle. Was this poor asshole a cop? “Oh man, you are way in over your head.”

“I’ve had worse.” The guy actually sounded serious.

Billy leaned in closer and said in a threateningly low voice, “You...have no... _idea_.”

“ _Try me._ ” 

The words hung in the air between them. After a beat of silence Billy stepped back and laughed, this time utterly without humor. “Alright. How’s this? I died in there.” He swung his arm back to point at the mall. “ _Years and years ago._ A giant monster from another dimension possessed a bunch of people and tried to murder some kids and just last week, I dug myself out of a pond in some random fuck no where forest and crawled back to Indiana- oh yeah and it’s the future. I’m from the past. Nice to meet you.” He felt the urge to tell him about the memory loss and the warped time lapses- he’d felt the urge to tell just about anyone- just so that he didn't have to deal with it alone, so that maybe someone could figure out how to help him, but out of what must have been self preservation he kept it to himself.

The man was giving him that searching look again. Then he just...nodded. As if that all made sense. He probably suspected Billy was some sort of lunatic, and had just gotten the confirmation he needed.. 

“You got a name?”

 _Fuck it, right? "_...It’s Hargrove," he told him. Not giving him the courtesy of a first name.

“Well, Hargrove, my name is Dean Winchester, and if you’re from the past, like you say you are, then you probably have no idea who I am.”

Billy huffed. “Think you’re somebody special, huh?” His teeth were close to chattering. He shouldn’t have stood out here this long. Didn't know how long he'd even been here. 

“Listen," Dean said reasonably. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before. We could help each other out. I could-uh, help you with your little problem.” 

“Piss off," he spat. “Even if I wanted your help, you couldn’t do shit. Now get the fuck out of my way.” He went to grab the handle of his car door, wanting nothing but his jacket and his cigarettes, because what else did he have? But, as if on cue, a flash of black pain seared across his vision and he fell against the car. His ears began to ring so loudly he thought his head was going to explode, he could feel the crawling sensation beneath his skin, and the last thing he heard was the stranger saying something to him before everything went dark.


	8. French Fries

  
  
  


When he woke up he was warm. Too warm. He was on a soft mattress. He shoved the blankets sloppily off his upper body, tried to blink, then lay still again long enough he almost fell back asleep until he heard movement in the room and turned his head. The man from the parking lot was there on the other side of the room...what was his name? Winchester. Like the gun. Dean. Like James Dean, or some shit.

Dean looked over and saw his _guest_ was waking up.

“Where’s my car?” Hargrove slurred drunkenly, half buried in the mattress.

“Wake up in a strange place and the first thing you're worried about is your car?” Dean made a face. “I mean, I get that I guess.” 

“Where am I?” He wasn’t trying to get up yet, but had rolled over on his back and was looking around suspiciously.

“Different motel. Same town.” Dean was at the table, Billy could see he was working on something, cleaning something, it looked like a gun. “You do remember what town you’re in right?”

“Hawkins,” Billy croaked. He sat up and slowly dropped his legs over the side of the bed. His shoes...where the hell...had this guy taken off his shoes?

“I’d take it slow if I were you.You had a pretty bad fever last night.” Dean came over and sat across from him on the other bed. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, before.”

Hargrove's heavy lidded burnt-out stare traveled up from the floor to settle on Dean. Dean took a good look at him again. His hair was a matted mess and he had a short beard coming in, there was a cut across his cheekbone that had barely started to heal...he had a gold earring in his left ear. “Where’d you say you were from?”

“I didn’t.”

“I mean, _when_?”

Billy looked away from him. “1985,” he said quietly.

That explained the hair, Dean supposed, and decided to just go with the idea that Hargrove wasn't making this up for now. “Do you remember what the last thing that happened to you there was?”

 _Oh, he remembered._ It was never going to leave his fucking mind. “Is there a point to this?” Billy snapped at him. “What are you some kinda freak that gets off on taking unconscious men back to his room? Why should I tell you anything?” He stood up.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Dean said. “I guess I should have left you unconscious in the parking lot to freeze to death or get eaten by alternate universe demons! My bad.” 

Billy was up and looking for his boots. He found them and sat back down on the end of the bed to put them on. 

“I’m sure there was a good reason for your little fainting spell, but-”

 _“I didn’t faint.”_ He threw a nasty look over his shoulder as he shoved his foot into his boot.

“When was the last time you ate? Cus’ dragging your ass back here was a lot easier than it should have been.”

Billy didn’t actually know when he’d eaten last. He had stolen a few things from the gas station from what he remembered but that was it. He said nothing. 

“I’m going to the diner down the street, because _I_ am _starving_. You come with me, I’ll take you back to your car right after- _or,_ you can walk out that door and figure it out yourself but forewarning it is not a short walk and it's still forty degrees outside.” 

Dean took Hargrove’s seething silence for agreement, although it probably wasn’t. He threw one of his jackets at him as he opened the door and Hargrove caught it on reflex. He walked out before the guy could protest. He sat in the car long enough to wonder if Hargrove really was planning on taking off and just giving Dean the finger, but he came out finally and got into the passenger seat, still seething, quietly. He said almost nothing to Dean on the short drive to the restaurant, as if the act of going with him was a defeat he was coping with. 

“So,” Dean said “You got a first name? Hargrove doesn’t sound like a first name.”

Another one of those lengthy pauses that Hargrove was real good at went by and then finally he said in his low morose tone “...Billy.”

Dean looked over, the guy was staring out the window away from Dean. “Alright. Billy.” 

  
  
  


As they slid into the diner booths Billy eyed their surroundings. The yellow and white faux leather of the seats, the light grey pearled table tops, the bolted down bar stools alongside the counter near the kitchen. Billy was looking adrift. “I’ve been here…” he said softly.

“Here, specifically?”

“Yeah but...actually it looks almost exactly the same.” 

“Well, most of the Midwest is still stuck in the seventies anyway,” Dean said as he eyed his menu.

A waitress in a blue dress and apron came over and asked if they wanted any coffee to start with. 

“No,” Billy said.

“Two coffees,” Dean told her.

Billy stared at Dean moodily again, looking annoyed, or something. “You’re paying.” 

“Yeah no, I know. Get whatever you want.” He set his menu down, fully decided, and rubbed his hands together.

Billy apathetically slid his plastic menu around so he could read it, and suddenly the annoyance in his face cleared up, like clouds uncovering the sun. Dean was actually a little stunned to see the new expression that broke out. He was sitting there, Dean’s heavy canvas jacket sagged on his shoulders a little, his hair was a wild mess, and he looked weirdly innocent for someone who had almost crushed Dean’s windpipe not that long ago. 

“ _French fries,"_ Billy said breathily. “Jesus, I don’t remember the last time I ate anything normal.” 

Dean had found the key. It was food. Billy suddenly opened up like a locked chest. 

“After I died-” he did air quotes with his fingers at the word ‘died’ “-I ended up back in the dark place. But after a while I found this...door? This path? To this other place. Another world or something."

"Dark place?"

Billy stared at the tabletop as if trying to work it out. "Yeah like... _the void,_ but with random shit sitting around. It's hard to explain. Imagien you're in a pitch black room, but there's some objects that are visible, like the light is on just for those things."

Dean nodded. That sounded familiar too. Sounded uncomfortably like _The Nothing_ Cas had been stuck in.

"Once I got out I couldn't go back. Not that I would have. It _sucked_. The other place wasn’t better either but it was at least kinda like here.” He laid his palms flat on the table, as if experiencing the here-ness of where they were. He looked up into Dean’s eyes- “there were monsters though. Big ones. New kinds of creatures. You know, as if the first ones weren’t enough? I don’t know how I survived. I guess technically I was already dead."

The waitress came back. “You boys ready?”

“Uh yeah," Dean said. "I’ll have the special. Extra sausage.”

She looked at Billy.

"Number nine I guess.”

“Can we get a side of fries as well?”

“Sure thing, hon.” She smiled at them before walking away.

Billy carefully avoided looking at Dean when he mentioned the fries, but Dean didn’t think he was going to protest.

“What’d it look like?” Dean sipped his coffee out of the thick off-white cup. 

“Uh, like, like just before the sun sets, just, twilight that never ends. Trees. Nothing else. Just woods and shit and horrible dark fucking twilight _all_ the time.”

“Big monsters. Unending twilight. That’s definitely Purgatory. How you managed to time jump through that place to here I don’t understand.” He took another sip. “What's new though I guess.”

“I thought it was in my head, especially the first place." He leaned his head back onto the seat and Dean watched the Adam's apple in his throat move. "I don’t know anymore.” Billy drifted into space staring out the window, lost in some terrilbe dissociative contemplation as fatigue came to settle on his shoulders once again. 

“The coffee is decent. Should try it," Dean encouraged him. 

Billy wrapped his hands around the cup and held it as it let off warm wafts of steam into the air. He didn’t drink, just stared into the hot brown liquid. 

When their food finally arrived Billy ate like a man who’d been, well, starving in an alternate dimension for years. Dean tried to eat his sausage rolls and not stare but Hargrove was packing it away with a lust that was incredibly diverting. Forkful after forkful of scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast, and sausage went into the guy. Dean gave the surrounding diner a surreptitious glance when Billy groaned a little too passionately over the potatoes.

The conversation was entirely put on hold. Dean was honestly a little impressed after everything when Billy finally picked up the orange juice that the waitress had brought and chugged it, almost all of it, down to the bottom, as if this had been a drinking contest. He let out a heavy breath afterwards, gave it a few seconds and started on the fries. Dean hadn’t had any of them, and wasn’t really planning on it at this point. He finished his own food at a much more casual pace.

“Wow, you boys were hungry,” the waitress said when she came back, the way she probably said it to everyone. _Little did she know._ Dean resisted the urge to make any sort of comment, dad joke or otherwise like he usually might have. “Is there anything else I can get you?”

He wasn't entirely sure Billy couldn’t put away another plate exactly the same size he just had, but there was one thing…

“Pie. I could definitely go for some pie.”


	9. Witnesses

The food had done wonders for Billy’s demeanor. He was twice as energetic, twice as talkative, and ten times more of a bitch. He had plenty of snap back comments for Dean now. “You really wanna know what I think?” He told Dean once they were back in the Impala. "I think you’re a fuckin’ wack job.”

Dean side eyed him, hard. “After all that giant monster crap you were spewing, you wanna call _me_ crazy?”

“Yeah, see, I _know_ I’m not crazy, but you- I think you’re just excited to finally meet someone you think is as fucked in the head as you are. And you’ll agree to anything.”

“That would almost make sense- except that we both saw those things. We were in the same room. Did you blank on that one too?”

Billy looked like he hadn’t considered that but tried not to show it. He shrugged. “Still think you’re nuts.”

Dean just shook his head. “So what’s the deal with the venus fly traps on legs.” Billy didn’t say anything right away and Dean took his eyes off the road to scan his expression. 

“I don’t really know. They’re from before. From where I came from. I hadn’t seen any for a long time.” 

“But they listen to you. You can control them.”

“No.”

“Back at that house? That thing was afraid of you.”

“I don’t know. They’re afraid of him, it, the thing- the mind flayer.”

 _“Excuse me?_ The _what?”_

“It’s what they called it, my sister and her friends, they called it _The Mind Flayer_. I don’t know what the fuck it was. Those things, they listen to it. It’s their master or something.”

“So you’re possessed by this Mind Flayer?” Dean tried to sound as rational about that as possible.

Billy went tense and silent again and Dean looked at him, at the road, and back at Billy.

“I’m not possessed,” Billy told him. 

He didn’t look possessed, sure, sitting there with his messy hair and very human sense of discomfort, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Well you’re something. You threw a dude through a window.”

Billy actually laughed at that. “That was an accident.”

“You found your way out of purgatory,” Dean accused. “People don’t just _find_ their way out of purgatory.”

“Well,” Billy said with conceit, “maybe I’m not _just people_.” 

“And monsters aren’t allowed to leave,” Dean ignored his comment and continued, “unless they’re transported out _inside_ a human host.” 

Billy looked uncomfortable and shifted in his seat. “And by the way, breaking a dish is an accident, throwing someone through a window is not.” 

“Well I’m not possessed anymore,” Billy said defensively.

“ _Anymore_? You’re still something! Normal people don’t have that kind of strength. And these things- these demogargoyles or whatever the hell they are, know how to find you.”

“What’s your point?” Billy raised his voice this time.

Dean gave him a look of astonishment. “Aren’t you concerned?” 

“Dean, I’m _alive._ When I get over that one, then maybe I’ll care.” 

It was the first time he had used Dean’s name and it felt strange to hear it coming from someone Dean had practically been hunting.

They turned into the driveway approaching the mall. The gates around the entire property had been torn down here and Dean wondered if that had also been Billy’s work the night before.

Billy leaned up eagerly as they got close to the mall, and looked for his car. “Thank fuck,” he breathed when the Camaro came into sight, and practically jumped out before they had stopped as they pulled up beside it. 

Dean got out and leaned his arms on the roof of the Impala as Billy got into his car and dug around in the console before pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He examined the abandoned mall now in the daytime. The retro architectural design on the front was weathered and battered. Faded paint that had probably been bright and bold was dull and washed out. Crowley’s words echoed in his head _...._

_They wouldn't be here without a reason… Who’s your host?... Find the source…_

He looked at Billy sucking in a deep pull off his cigarette with incredibly human desperation. This guy was in some deep shit. Dean wasn't sure Billy even knew how deep. 

“You can have your ugly jacket back,” Billy said as he shimmied out of the item and tossed the canvas jacket at Dean. He slipped back into his own leather jacket. “Hey,” he said around the cigarette between his lips. 

“Hm?”

“Why do all the guys dress like losers now, what happened? They outlaw colors after I die? Everyone dresses like my fuckin dad nowadays.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, it ain’t the eighties that’s for sure.”

Billy raised his eyebrows in expressive sarcasm. Dean didn’t realize anyone could be sarcastic with just their eyebrows, except maybe Sam come to think of it. Dean eyed Billy worn faded jeans and heavily stained white tank under the jacket. "Is this vintage, your get up? Or did you get this here?"

"Uh yeah, some of it. I mean I stole the jacket off a bar stool but uh," he looked down at himself, "you'll just have to take my word when I say this outfit was a lot cleaner before I died." He winked at Dean dismissively and looked away.

As Billy smoked Dean weighed his options. Billy was going to leave, and Dean needed to figure out where the monsters were coming from. If Billy was the host he had to find a way to stop him, or what was in him, and he had a feeling Billy wasn't going to go along with it cheerfully.

“So,” Billy mumbled around his cigarette, “you’re like, what, some sorta FBI or something?”

“It’s a little more like the Men in Black,” Dean said. Billy didn’t seem to get the reference. “I’m a Hunter. Most people don’t know we exist. We’re scattered around, but there aren’t too many these days. There’s a faction in England, probably other places too. They’re a bunch of dicks but they exist.”

“So you guys like, hunt monsters and shit?”

“Pretty much.” 

Billy just shook his head as if it was all _whatever_ to him at this point and kicked a small rock across the ground. 

“Listen…” Dean braced for how _well_ his spiel was going to go over, “you could come back with me. I have something that might be able to help you.”

“ _Help me?_ With what? Dean, I told you, I don’t need your help- or anyone else’s for that matter.”

It was time to cut the bullshit. “You’re _possessed_ , Billy.” Dean said with authority. “You wanna live the rest of your- probably short- life like that? You wanna be some monster’s bitch?” 

Billy’s eye twitched a little as he glared at Dean. “I would be dead already if not for this _possession_. Maybe I don’t want to get rid of it.”

“C’mon man, that’s no life!”

Billy walked a few steps to stand near the front of the Impala, he faced Dean, chest forward and looked hard into his eyes. Dean wondered if Billy had ever spent a day not looking for a fight. “What makes you think _I’m_ _not_ the monster?”

Dean stared into Billy’s eyes for what felt like a very long ten seconds, searchingly, Billy didn’t look away. “I’ve met monsters, Billy. You’re not one of them,” he said. 

Billy laughed for some reason and turned his back on Dean to go lean against his own car. 

“Not so long as you keep fighting it. We might even be able to get you back to your time. Back to your old life,” Dean pressed on.

“Some life that was,” he muttered barely loud enough for Dean to hear. He stamped out his cigarette on the ground. “Listen Dean, I’m sure you’re a real nice guy but…” he looked over at him, looked at the serious expression on his handsome face, and Dean was waiting for a good excuse, staring intently at Billy. He definitely wasn’t nuts. This guy was for real, as real as Billy anyway, he could see it in his face. He didn’t know what to say so he just thrust his hands into his pockets and tipped his head back to look at the sky. Same sky as any year. Fucking hell when had any guy ever offered him anything? Much less a good looking one? He was alone in this shit, and Dean was offering him help. He would be an idiot not to take it. How much would he have given to have some attractive man come up to him back home and offer to save him from his life? Here he was now turning him down like a true masochist. “I gotta do this alone,” he said and he wasn’t even sure why, it was just how he felt. In any case he didn't need someone doing useless new age spells on him or taking him to church to get exorcised.

Dean blew out a breath that sounded annoyed, he had apparently reached his limit with courtesy. “Okay,” he said. He went to the back of his car and popped open the trunk. 

Billy sidled along the Camaro to look at what was happening back there. It looked like Dean’s car was full of...guns. Lots of guns. Weapons and knives, things- fuck he didn’t know what they were. “The hell is all that?” He asked him.

Dean closed the trunk but now he was armed with something bigger than a handgun. He slung a small pack over his shoulder. “You can help me, or you can carry on with whatever it is you got planned,” Dean said. “If that’s what you choose to do I have a feeling this won't be the last time we see each other.” He gave Billy a meaningful look and for the first time Billy felt like Dean might actually be a threat to him. He looked at Dean warily as the man breezed past and headed towards the mall. He wrapped his arms around himself, the leather jacket was cold in the chilly breeze and he was reminded how little he had. “You won’t find anything in there,” he called after Dean but Dean didn’t stop and he didn’t look back. 

  
  
There really wasn’t much to see, not at first. Dean scouted out the inside of the mall finding no more to look at then some retro signage and a lot of explosive damage. It was a wonder they hadn’t just torn the building down, maybe the property was still owned by someone. He walked the entire length of the mall, past stores that had gone out of business a long time ago, every sound seemed to echo even though he tried to walk quietly. Discarded mannequins gave the place a creepy vibe. At the south end of the mall he left the public area and made his way into a service corridor, it was incredibly dark without the lights, no windows around, just the small slits from the doors he had come through. After a few turns he saw a lighter area and came to a back door where he could see what looked like probably a drop off spot for merchandise distributors. There was a large dock which should have been empty- but it wasn’t. 

An unmarked white truck the size of a moving van was parked out back. He pushed the doors open carefully and went out. He could hear someone talking nearby. _People_ had been the last thing he expected to find here. He ducked back behind the wall near the door he’d come out of. 

There were two men from the sound of it. He didn’t risk peeking back around the corner again but he could hear a rolling door being pulled up and movement like they were unloading something heavy. Someone was complaining. “I bet this is all just bullshit. Another false alarm. Has anyone actually seen this guy?”

“Something tripped the sensors. They’re out looking for him now. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“If this is another one of their screw ups...” Dean couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, it all became garbled as whoever was speaking moved into an area where the sound didn’t travel as well.

“Davenport said they were sure this time. We may finally…” the second speaker drifted into imperceptible territory as well. 

Dean crept out further down the walkway ahead of him and checked for cameras, from what little he had heard It sounded like this place was being monitored. He didn’t see anyone out there now so he hopped the railing and went to look at the truck. It was still open and there were an assortment of very large metal lock boxes inside, most with hazard warning signs. He considered going into the building but this looked like some less than legal government business and flashing a fake badge probably wasn't going to get him very much consideration. He could hear them, or someone, coming back out again and he darted back to his spot by the door, jumping up the few feet of concrete to grab the rail and climb back over. 

They were whispering from the sound of it now which didn’t help with Dean’s eavesdropping. “Let’s just hope it's not another twenty eight Colfax again.”

“He’s dead, right?”

There was a jumble of sound and then he caught part of someone's last statement and it made his whole body suddenly feel numb. 

“-a witness, the old guy said he saw _Hargrove_. That can’t be a coincidence.”

_Oh shit._

Dean ducked back inside as quietly as possible and slipped into the service corridor again but not before someone new came out and started speaking Russian which added a whole new level of what the hell. Now that he was concerned about whether there were active cameras in the old building or not he was eyeing every corner for them. He practically ran back to the middle of the mall, staying alert for other people but the place seemed as dead as ever. He encountered no one by the time he got to the entrance. Wherever these people were holed up it wasn’t in plain sight. All this time some faceless X-files spooks had been hunting his guy and here Dean was dangling him right in front of them. He stepped through the broken window of the front door and looked out. 

The camaro was gone.


	10. Soft Rock

After sitting around for twenty minutes Billy had finally taken off, he was not even sure why he had waited that long. Maybe because there was nowhere to go. He had half planned to drive to California, find Max if he could, maybe throw himself _directly_ into the ocean. He wasn’t sure about any of it. He had watched the front doors of the mall while he burned through another cigarette with the window down, but the longer he had sat there the more anxious he’d felt. He could see the old Ford in front of the doors- could feel the phantom sensation in his body of the acceleration, pedal to the floor, tires screaming in his memory as the BMW T-boned the Camaro and flames consumed his car. He couldn't even look at the store front. After that visceral recollection he had opened the car door and got out to walk a tight circle like a lion in a cage before getting angry at himself and forcing himself back inside the vehicle.

As he drove he wondered what Dean was doing in there. Maybe he had found something. But maybe not. Maybe those demodogs had come back. He didn’t think Dean could handle them on his own, maybe one, but not more than that. He wasn’t sure he could either, he had only ever been partly aware of what was going on when they came around. 

The longer Billy drove the more he realized how much he, _maybe_ , needed Dean. He had no one else to turn to and nowhere to go. What the fuck would he do? Get a job flipping burgers and try to get someone to let him live somewhere while this thing inside him- he shuddered, a full body shake as if trying to shrug off something crawling across his skin...this thing… Dean was his only option- provided he didn’t turn out to be a lunatic, which Billy didn't suspect was the case. And _Fuck_ , he was going to have to go back. Dean was the only person who believed Billy. There was nobody else that was going to take his word for it, he could be almost one hundred percent sure of that. Maybe ninety eight percent, but only because he himself was actual living proof of something weird just by existing. He didn’t even know why Dean was trusting him.

With a growl he hit the breaks, made a turn right in the middle of the highway, and doubled back to Starcourt. When he veered into the abandoned lot soon after his heart dropped into his stomach. The shiny black Chevy was gone. He hadn’t realized he had just draped his hopes all on Dean’s help until it wasn’t an option. He eyed the road out. How far could Dean have gone by now? He decided to drive a lap around the mall just in case.

~~~~~~~~~

“There’s something weird going on here, Sam,” Dean said into the cell phone. He was standing near the Impala on the side of the road. “Some real strange alien cover up type of stuff.”

 _“Aliens?”_ Sam’s alarmed voice traveled through the phone.

“Not like _actual_ aliens just Deep Throat conspiracy theory crap.”

_“Oh. Okay. Good. I’m not sure if I’m ready for actual aliens.”_

“Can’t be worse than Lucifer-” 

“I hope you’re not talking about me.” That sly brogue cropped up suddenly next to Dean out of nowhere.

“Jesus Christ!” Dean said, almost dropping the phone. “Can you knock first?” He barked at Crowley. Crowley didn’t point out the obvious fact that they were outside. “Sam, I’ll call you back.” He hung up the phone and looked at the demon.

“Well?” Crowley said expectantly.

“Well _what_?”

“Did you get rid of it?”

“Get rid of _what_?”

“The host, Dean. Come on, catch up.”

“Hold on, we never said anything about getting rid of the host.”

Crowley stared at him goggle-eyed. “My apologies, I thought it was so obvious I didn’t need to spell it out for you,” he said. “Apparently I was mistaken.”

Dean stared out at the thick green cornfield that made up most of the scenery apart from a few thin trees and some telephone poles and reminded himself for maybe the hundredth time that Crowley was not on his team, and never had been. Crowley was on Crowley's team, always.

“I’m workin on it, alright?”

Crowley might have afforded him another casual depreciating remark but his brow wrinkled as a noise carried over to them from afar. Dean recognized it almost immediately and as it grew louder he became more certain he knew what it was. The whirring scream of the Camaro’s engine grew closer and more vicious and Dean could see it was doing a dangerous speed as it crested the hill along the long country highway. At that speed it was going to reach them in seconds. Behind it, barely keeping up were two regular black sedan type cars, round and modern looking like shapeless props behind the long body of the shark-like Camaro. 

Dean got into his car, leaving Crowley without a second glance and waited for the deafening rush of the Camaro that blasted past them hard enough to rock the car, along with the quieter black vehicles before he careened onto the highway and pursued them. He tried to keep up but he wasn’t interested in destroying his car or himself in the process. The impala was a hardy beauty built for endurance not speed. 

They passed a few farmhouses, a large church, another cornfield, and ran two stop signs before the road became a one lane crash course and he lost sight of them as the road began to curve.

The country lane eventually turned into a long straightaway that kept going on and on until finally up ahead he could see one of the black sedans, having given up by the look of it after a close call with the flatbed of a large semi tractor. He drove around them and eventually came to a fork. It was easy to see which way they had gone from the long fresh burn out marks on the ground caused by a sharp turn. This road became even more narrow and eventually petered off into the trees and ran straight up to a large church oddly placed out here in the middle of nowhere.

And there they were, they’d hit a dead end. Dean rolled up behind the black car stopped in the small dirt parking lot and got out. Two men were there, they had Billy on the ground, hands behind his back, from the look of it he hadn’t completely avoided one of the nearby trees with his left bumper; maybe that had given his pursuers the upper hand. They looked like some sort of trained militia with closely cropped hair in light tactical gear over their black suits.

Billy’s eyes darted to Dean as Dean got out of the car and the two men seemed surprised to see him. “Stay back!” One shouted at him in a thick Russian accent, the other raised his gun and shot at Dean without hesitation.

He ducked behind his door as soon as the man raised his gun and the bullet went through his window. So much for talking it out. Billy must have elbowed or kicked one of them because he heard a grunt and took the opportunity to fire back.

“What the hell-” he heard one of them shout. They must have thought he was just some random unarmed civilian. His shot hit one of them in the leg and he went down with a scream. Billy was up in an instant grappling with the one man standing. 

“Put the gun down,” Dean shouted as he came out from behind the car, aiming at the man who had managed to push Billy up against the car while using his gun for leverage, pressing it under Billy’s chin. Dean kicked the gun away from the man who was on the ground cursing and shouting.

“You know you can’t kill him anyways,” Dean said ominously, throwing it out there for effect. Billy stared violently at his aggressor.

The man with the gun looked incredibly disturbed, who knew what they thought about this whole thing, or about Billy. Dean wasn’t even sure he himself was on the right side here but he’d had to make a choice, and getting shot at tended to sway one’s allegiances.

The man with the Russian accent on the ground was yelling something about killing both of them.

“Back away,” Dean said, as he walked closer.

With a final look between Dean and Billy the man released him and backed off. He let his gun drop. Billy went for the gun that Dean had kicked away from the Russian, and aimed it at its former owner. Dean was suddenly concerned Billy was going to try and shoot all of them but he only stood there. “Give me the keys,” Dean said.

The two men eyed one another, hesitating. Billy walked over to their car and looked in. “They’re still here,” he told Dean. He reached inside and took the key out of the ignition. Dean saw him grab a radio giving off a static crackle and throw it on the ground, stomping it until it went dead. 

Dean made the two men get on the ground so they could tie their hands behind them and then checked them for any other communication devices. Once satisfied he told Billy to get in the Impala.

“What?” 

“Billy you gotta leave that car it’s too easy to track.”

“I’m not leaving my car,” Billy said passionately.

“They can trace you easily- they have,” he faltered, not wanting to say anything about Billy’s supposed time traveling in front of these people. “They can trace you with satellites and all kinds of shit. Every police scanner will be alerted to look out for _that_ car. You won’t get far.” Their conversation took place off to the side, quiet enough to not be overheard by the Russians. Dean walked back to the Impala, Billy was still standing there between the black sedan and Dean’s car looking furious and torn.

“You gonna hang out here until reinforcements show up?”

Billy dragged his hands down his face and stared at the Camaro.

But he was taking too long. “Get in the car!” Dean shouted at him.

“No one tells me what to do,” Billy snarled at him. “Are you with them? Is that what this shit is all about, the nice guy act? _Saving people_.” He spat angrily at the ground in Dean’s direction. “ _Bullshit_.” He marched over to the Camaro, threw himself into the driver seat and started it up, nearly running the two men on the ground over as he reversed, they yelled and rolled as far out of the way as possible.

“For fuck’s sake,” Dean exclaimed. He aimed his gun and effectively blew out the back two tires on the Camaro with a volley of shots as it trundled back to the road, but the car didn’t stop. Billy led him on a chase back down the road they’d come up before taking a new turn off and pushing the crippled vehicle to the max until one of the tires caved and started giving off sparks. Unfortunately they had just hit town again but they were no longer in Hawkins. Dean had no idea where they were. 

When the Camaro came skidding to a bone jarring stop Dean had to break hard, stopping behind the other car, he watched as Billy got out looking like he was set to murder Dean. Dean watched him through the windshield, fortunately he was the only one with a gun, and Billy hesitated by his car glaring daggers. “Don’t be stupid, Hargrove,” Dean called out. “I’m not with them. I let you go. Remember?”

“I’m sure you’ve got your own motive,” Billy snarled. 

“Yeah my motive is trying to stop the apocalypse, as usual.”

Billy clenched and unclenched his fists a few times. Dean saw him squeeze his eyes closed for half a second, face tight, the vein in his neck strained into visibility, he turned away from Dean, eyes fluttering closed.

It was a familiar look. It was the sort of look vampires got when resisting the urge, the look wolves got before turning, he had seen it on Sam and, hell, even on himself. He was fighting the thing inside him. Billy dragged his forearm under his nose and turned away, walked away to the front of the Camaro and clutched the side mirror, the muscles in his back and shoulders visibly tense through his shirt. After a moment he relaxed and straightened up. He reached through the window of the car and took the keys out along with his jacket before he started walking away from Dean like he wasn’t there.

And if Dean had wanted to finish it right there he could have. He opened the door, stood up, looked down the sight of the gun, aimed it directly at the back of Billy’s head... and did nothing. Whatever Billy was, he was dangerous, and he was just going to wander off and maybe kill someone or worse. Dean held himself there in a paralysis of conflict. 

Billy looked over his shoulder once, eyebrow raised, he looked straight at Dean without any expression and looked away. His pace didn’t change at all. 

Dean couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. The guilt he tried to ignore when he had to make the hard choices laid heavily on his shoulder, whispering to him that he was doing the right thing, hesitating to act before thinking it out, while on the other shoulder, like a little demon, a voice told him not to worry about it. All those monsters he had murdered -host still alive- had been for the greater good. Same with the Vamps and the Rugarus and everything else, even if they might have been good people at first they would go bad eventually. Billy wasn’t any different, maybe even worse, and yet here Dean was, letting this modern day Cthulhu incarnate simply walk away…

And Dean realized, while simultaneously realizing the absurdity of realizing it right then, that otherworldly demi-god or not, Billy Hargrove had a nice ass. He lowered the gun and cursed. He was really coming apart. How was he going to explain this to Sam- or Cas? ' _Sorry, I just couldn’t shoot him when his back was to me, his jeans were too tight?'_ Not an option. Dean squinted and aimed with more determination. One shot to the back of the head would probably do it, maybe even neutralize his connection to the Mind Flayer. Billy was getting farther and farther away...

Dumping a mountain of conflicted feelings on himself, Dean gave up. He lowered the smoothly etched black pistol filled with demon trap bullets. 

Billy for his part, seemed to have stopped caring- or was actively choosing to ignore that Dean had ever been there at all and simply continued on down the road. Dean gave him the lead until he reached an intersection and went inside a quick stop on the corner, before he drove the Impala the half a block to it and parked on the side of the street where he got out and followed Billy into the mini mart with the gun tucked into his pants.

Billy looked over his shoulder at Dean as he came in and raised an eyebrow again- this time with a smirk. He watched as Billy five-finger-discounted more things than he would have believed could fit inside Billy’s jacket, all the while glancing over at Dean like he dared him to do something about it and then he went to the counter to buy cigarettes while Dean lingered in the aisle. Billy seemed to know that Dean wasn’t going to pull the trigger on him and he was taunting him for it. Dean checked the window, paranoid that the other black sedan might just show up any time now with reinforcements or that the men he had left tied up might have been rescued by now. He honestly wasn't sure who was chasing who anymore.

Behind the counter the radio fuzzed out, the sound of the newscaster drowned in hissing static, the clerk handed Billy his change and turned to mess with it. Billy doubled over suddenly, his hands pressed to the sides of his temples, groaning like he was in pain. He staggered up and rushed out the door. The cow bell hanging on the handle crashed with a wild jangle and the door swung out with enough force to crack the glass in its window. It was clear it hadn’t been done intentionally and Billy flinched away when it broke. The man at the register jumped and yelled as he turned around- Dean was already out the door. Billy was staggering down the sidewalk with his hand on the brick wall of the building beside, leveraging himself against it as he tried to keep walking.

“Hargrove," Dean called after him. “Hey, stop!” He jogged a few feet and caught up to him.

“Stay away from me,” Billy threatened. 

“Yeah you look like you’re just fine.”

Still bracing himself Billy covered his eyes with his free hand. It was shaky. The muscle in his jaw quivered. Dean was hesitant to touch him after seeing what he had done to the door but when Billy sagged and started to collapse he grabbed his arm and hauled him up. “Don’t touch me,” Billy muttered but it was strained and he made no move to push Dean away. 

A couple walking by gave them a wide berth and cautious glances, looking over their shoulders at them and whispering as they passed. 

“Every time we meet you end up in my arms,” Dean said sarcastically.

“Just because I didn't kill you before...” Billy told him although his voice was fainter now. Dean could see tiny black veins crawling up the side of Billy’s neck and maybe if he hadn’t seen a couple dozen people vomiting black demon slime or bleeding out their eyes it might have disturbed him more but it did make things seem more dire. His hand was around Billy’s upper arm, around his bicep, smooth and just a little slick to the touch from exerting himself, or maybe it was the fever that had gripped him before coming back. Dean wondered if it was possible to contract whatever this was through touch but he didn’t want to linger like this and find out. 

Billy reached out suddenly with a speed that belied his current condition and grabbed for the gun at Dean’s waist. Dean caught his wrist just as Billy’s fingers brushed the hilt of the weapon and he shoved Billy back against the brick wall beside them without letting his wrist go. He didn’t try to resist Dean’s weight on his shoulder, only the hold on his wrist, and the harder he struggled the more the black ichor in his skin grew, it entered into his eyes. This close Dean could see tiny tendrils like ink flaring at the corners as Billy glared at him and he nearly let go in alarm. This was not what he had wanted. Billy got damn near close to overpowering him before he finally gave out and let go with a huff, almost a laugh. Dean was relieved, he had been a second away from backing off.

“Alright,” Billy panted, “you win.” He leaned his head back against the brick. “Take me to your little guild- laboratory or whatever. I don’t care.” 

Dean looked at him skeptically, not sure if Billy was bluffing until Billy rolled his eyes and pushed himself away from the wall, Dean let him go, the marks seemed to be fading fast from Billy's body as and he limped towards the Impala and used the car to steady himself as he went to the passenger side and presumptuously let himself in.

Dean was slow to approach as he decided what to do about this. “What are you waiting for?” Billy said through the window, looking at him expectantly. He sighed at the roller coaster that was apparently Billy Hargrove and finally went and got in- with extreme suspicion. Billy was subdued besides him now which seemed like a dramatic change, as if he had just exerted the last of his efforts. He had his arms wrapped around his upper body, hugging himself, slouching deeply against the leather seat. Dean stared at him for a good chunk of time not trusting this one bit. “I will not hesitate to shoot you if you try anything,” he let him know. 

“Nice,” Billy said.

“Need anything from your car?” 

“I’m not good at goodbyes. Just drive before I change my mind.”

That was something Dean wasn't going to contest him on. He drove. Was eager to get the hell out of this place. He drove past the very small assortment of buildings that served as a downtown here, past one more ranch, without catching sight of a single black sedan, and finally he got to the freeway and headed North. His complicated companion sat for a long time with one hand shading his eyes, and the other clenched unrelentingly white-knuckled on his thigh until they were deep into the flow of cars on the I-74. “Where are we going?” he asked eventually, the lack of interest evident in his voice.

“Lebanon.”

“Lebanon?”

“Lebanon Kansas?”

“Why?” 

“Because, that’s where the book is.”

“Book?” He looked at Dean. “A fucking book? Are you serious?” He looked- no, _rolled_ , his eyes away. 

“I’ll explain, but we just need to get as far away from here as we can right now.”

They drove without any conversation for awhile until at some point Dean said, “I’m sorry about the car.” Billy was quiet long enough that it seemed he wasn’t going to say anything in reply but eventually he did. “That was my car,” he said flatly. Dean knew without asking that he meant decades ago, and that it had been his car back in the eighties, and yeah that must have stung. It hurt Dean just thinking about it.

The traffic wasn’t bad but in this part of the state but it started to slow down as the afternoon wore on and more and more cars took up the road. The sun was getting lower and the car was heating up. 

“Please tell me it's not the bible,” Billy said to him randomly.

“The bible? What? No. No it’s not the bible.” He was going to have to give him more of an explanation but he still didn’t trust him. “It’s uh, something else....like a grimoire of sorts.”

Billy groaned.

“Hold on-”

“Like the Egyptian Book of the Dead?” Billy asked sarcastically.

“No. This is real…” Dean thought about it for a second, “maybe that other one is too- I don’t know, I don’t really want to know- but it’s real and it might be the best shot we have of fixing this.” He could feel Billy’s gaze stubbornly fixated on him but he kept his eyes on the road and didn’t look over. 

They stopped at a gas station somewhere around the edge of Illinois and Dean refilled the tank while Billy stretched his legs, both of them relieved to escape the close confines of the car for a second. Billy hadn’t left his cigarettes behind and he smoked as he stood at the edge of the curb next to a square of short cut grass and watched the cars go by. “Fucking wild.” Dean heard him muttering. He left the curb and walked back as Dean was putting the gas nozzle back on its hook. “You know when I saw this thing,” he put his hand on the hood of the Impala, “I didn’t think anything of it but now…” he looked at the other cars around them, _“crazy._ ” He stood there with one hand hooked in his pocket and pointed at a silver Prius pulling in. “What in the hell is that!”

Dean chuckled. “That’s how you identify douchebags.” Dean was plastering duct tape to the bullet hole in his driver side window. Speeding down the freeway with a hole in your window was more than a little obnoxious.

Billy looked amused at everything in general. “I don’t know, Dean. I think I’m dreaming,” he said. "Wouldn't that be nice," he said more to himself.

Dean gazed back the way they had come wondering if he was making a gigantic mistake here. "Are there more of those things?" It wasn't as if he could trust that Billy would tell him the truth.

"Men in Black? Or Demon monster things? Either way I dunno," Billy said. Dean hoped he wasn't leaving the spot he needed to be most, that there wasn't some giant nest waiting to consume the town once he was too far away to be any help. 

When they were back in the car Billy helped himself to the compartment between the seats.

“-Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Dean demanded as Billy pulled out a handful of cassette tapes.

“Oh ho, what do we have here? Metallica, Motorhead- maybe being stuck in the car with you doesn’t have to suck after all.” 

Dean gave him a disparaging look but was surprised, the strangeness of it, of Billy sitting here, struck him in a new way. He was trying to imagine what Billy looked like in his own decade- assuming that whole story was true- or even what this gas station would have looked like back then. Probably like nothing. Probably an overgrown lot. It seemed new-ish. “‘I’ll have you know being stuck in a car with me is _awesome_ ,” he said.

Billy dropped most of the tapes in his lap and held one up. “What is this?” he shouted. ”What the hell is this! Oh my god, _what-_ ” he was staring at a Master of Puppets cassette tape with it’s notable but faded art, reddish and covered in white crosses.

“Nineteen eighty five,” Dean mused. “Geez that’s right you dropped off the map after that didn’t you? Oh boy, you are gonna get a kick out of this.”

Billy pushed the tape into the player. “Easy there,” Dean chastised. 

“Nineteen eighty six…” Billy read the side of the tape.

“They’ve got other albums- but this, definitely the most famous.” 

Billy’s commentary and the sheer virginity to the music Dean considered ancient made the next hour of the drive far more entertaining than he could have predicted. “So, hard rock fan, huh? Good thing we got a ten hour drive ahead of us because you have some catching up to do.”

“Ten hours?” Billy said in disbelief.

“Kansas ain’t exactly next door.”

“God what did I agree to?” Billy muttered.

“I envy you man, you got decades of hits to work through. Some of the best songs from these seventies and eighties bands came after nineteen eighty five, although I am partial to the earlier stuff.” Dean was trying to recall all the best music in the last few decades when he noticed Billy was giving him a serious look. _“What?”_

“Why are you helping me?” Billy asked quietly. It wasn’t a gentle tone, it was a deep suspicious one.

“...I’m not.” The air in the car was thick with tension. “But if this works, it’ll help everyone. Me, you, and everyone else. That’s the general idea at least. I don’t know if you know this but there’s more at stake here than just a couple of alien dogs running around...not to mention the whole angel war running in the background,” Dean muttered the last part to himself. He should really call Sam and let him know he was headed back and bringing company but it sounded like a lot of explaining he wasn’t in the mood for.

“Jesus,” Billy said.

“ _What_?”

“This song is just really long. It’s like eight minutes long.” Dean shook his head, having thought Billy was actually concerned about what he had just said but apparently not, as the second half of Master of Puppets kicked up for the third time.

“Okay, so fess up, what was your guilty pleasure? What embarrassing songs did you listen to?”

“I don’t listen to embarrassing songs.”

“You would have been born what? Late sixties? You have to have something. What did you listen to that wasn’t metal or hard rock?”

“You first,” Billy challenged.

“...Air Supply.”

“I don’t even know who that is- wait... _All Out of Love_?” When Dean confirmed it by saying nothing Billy flat out laughed at him. Dean nodded, chagrined. “I don’t know if I can beat that. I mean, I listened to Don Henley sometimes but that’s kinda it.”

“Boys of Summer,” Dean said like a statement of fact.

“Yeah.”

“C’mon, that’s not even embarrassing.”

“It was if you only hung out with punk kids… but that song always reminded me of driving around home back in San Diego.” He got quiet and nestled back into the corner by the door again, looking out the window so Dean couldn’t see his face. 

“Richard Marx,” Dean said and dug around until he fished out a very specific tape. “Very similar. Eighty seven.” Dean put in the tape and switched on _Endless Summer Nights_ and they drove for a while in a lull of soft eighties rock ballads. 

They fell into a comfortable mood for the duration of the trip and spoke a little here and there mostly with Dean trying to explain the last few decades to Billy while Billy worked his way through the candy he had stolen earlier. That morning at the diner and at Starcourt seemed like weeks ago. Their interactions felt almost natural now. As Billy sat there with a long piece of blue taffy he wasn't bothering to chew hanging from his mouth, Dean had to remind himself that Billy wasn’t wholly human.

Mid afternoon the sun was coming in hot and Billy cranked up the air conditioning without asking for permission. In the spirit of establishing trust Dean allowed it without comment even though it felt like overkill. Billy had relaxed, possibly more than Dean, and was slumped in the seat with his head back watching the landscape go by with a bright sleepy curiosity. Dean caught his eye when Billy turned to look his way, the afternoon sun was coming into the car and illuminating his skin and hair, and for a second Dean had a whimsical glimpse of what Billy must have been as an average boy during an 80’s summer maybe, living a normal life, ignorant and happy even. Dean had been saying something but couldn't remember what it had been when Billy smiled at him then, for the first time it seemed like, the most normal smile in the world that rounded out the apples of his cheeks and showed off his nice teeth and Dean’s head emptied itself totally. He squeezed the steering wheel tighter and realized his palms were starting to sweat little even with the full blast of the AC. When Billy turned his head away with the hint of that smile still lingering on his face Dean watched the road and felt nothing but a fluttering lightness in his arms and chest so distracting he actually forgot the suffocating heaviness of all the tasks weighing on him for a moment, and whatever that was, that empathy he felt when he looked at Billy, it was the reason he couldn't pull the trigger.

At some point in the easy quiet Billy dozed off. The sun was going down and they had switched on the radio because Billy had wanted to listen to what was popular these days. He hadn’t been impressed anymore by it than he had been by everyone’s modern day fashion. Now the radio was turned down low. There was a strange, perhaps, bitter comfort for Dean in the familiarity of driving into the night with someone asleep in the other seat, the act had carved out its own channel in his lifespan. He must have spent as many hours doing this as he had spent sleeping. It was part of him, whether he liked it or not and it made Billy feel familiar in a way he probably shouldn’t have. When Billy awoke a half hour later with a violent jolt and gasp he looked around wide eyed and alarmed until the recognition set in. He looked perturbed, uncomfortable with having let his guard down maybe.

“You okay?” Dean asked, more concerned about whether Billy might turn on him suddenly than anything else.

Billy shifted and pushed himself up more in the seat, brushing his hair back. “My knee is killing me,” he grumbled after a moment as if that was all it was.

“Alright well we’re more than halfway there. Might pull over and get something to eat but we should keep a low profile.”

“Can I drive?”

Dean furrowed his brow not believing Billy had the nerve to ask. “What- No?!”

Billy narrowed his eyes as if trying to get the measure of Dean’s conviction. “Can I _please_ drive?” He tried.

 _“No,”_ Dean said slowly and twice as hard.

Two sandwiches and a full tank of gas later found Billy slipping into the driver’s seat beside his very disgruntled looking companion. Dean held out the keys and squinted at Billy with a warning as Billy reached for them- he pulled his hand back in a fast smooth motion-

“What the hell?” Billy said, betrayed.

Dean pinned him down with his stare. “Don’t try anything weird.” He pointed a finger at him. “I mean it.”

“Like what?”

“Just don’t.”

“Alright, relax.”

Dean let him have the keys. He couldn’t believe he was doing it. Billy had sulked and sighed and stared off into space until Dean had finally caved and agreed to let Billy drive but only because Billy said sitting there without moving made his knee hurt, it definitely had not had anything to do with how sad his blue eyes looked beneath his dark lashes as he ate and refused to talk to Dean. They only had a few hours left anyway. 

The sun went down completely around seven thirty and Billy complained about having to piss until Dean finally told him to take the next exit and he pulled over somewhere on a deserted street that wasn’t meant for parking. Billy disappeared into the bushes and Dean had his reservations about it but what could he really do out here in the middle of nowhere? He looked into the rearview mirror and caught sight of a man in his back seat.

“Are you having fun?”

Dean contained his surprise and kept his expression immovable although he wanted to murder Crowley. “I don’t recall summoning you,” he said tightly.

“I do actually come and go as I please.”

“Yeah, well, dont?”

“Can’t help but notice our friend here is still walking around, driving even…” he wet his lips during his pause, “Dean, what are you doing?”

 _“My job,”_ Dean growled. “What are _you_ doing?” 

Crowley sat back and put one leg across the other. “Wait a minute- _why_ _Dean_ , you’re not _sweet_ on this fellow are you?”

"What? No!"

“It’s not like you to go sparing some poor bastard when it goes against the greater good.”

“I just don’t wanna gank someone if there’s another way, alright?”

“Don’t worry, darling, your secret is safe with me.”

 _“Gimme a break,”_ Dean blurted in irritation.

“But just so you know, you’re making this a lot harder for yourself.”

“Yeah, well what's new? If you’re so set on offing the guy why haven't you done it yourself?”

Crowley scrunched up his nose. “Ehh, it’s complicated.”

Dean glared at him through the mirror until suddenly he wasn’t there and Billy was opening the door to hop back inside. Dean attempted to seem like he hadn’t just been conversing with a demon. “Take this road up around the corner and we can get back on the freeway.”

“Roger that.”

“We’re not far now...” Dean said, feeling the urgency and uncertainty of things come back to him now that their trip was nearing its end. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what's funny about writing anything with supernatural is that you know they say fuck, like they must, but they aren't actually allowed to drop the F-bomb on the show so anytime I try to use it when Dean is talking it feels a little weird lol because I've probably never heard him say it.
> 
> I just finish watching the first half of Season 15 Supernatural and I'm dying. It hurts so much.


	11. Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you have stuck around this long with this fic's progress then you deserve to at least have someone be shirtless at this point. Let the UST begin.

Billy looked around at what the designers must have attempted to be ‘rustic’ charm and wondered if this was his life now, one shit colored motel room after another, like some new kind of alternate Limbo dimension. Dean slung his heavy duffel bag off his shoulder and dropped it onto the bed nearest to the door. Billy’s hands felt empty. Once again he was reminded he had nothing. He fingered the cigarettes in his pocket. He had been under the impression Dean was going to take them somewhere different, maybe to an office or a research facility- or his home? He had said nothing about checking into another motel and he wasn’t giving Billy any explanation. He was clearly keeping a tight lid on whatever he had going on and if his stony expression was anything to go off he was not planning on sharing any time soon. “So, what now?” Billy asked.

“I’m going to go get some things. You should stay here, get cleaned up-” he eyed Billy’s clothes and Billy knew he probably looked like he had crawled out of a dumpster, when actually it had been much worse than that.

“Where are you going?” Billy asked. 

Dean ignored the question. “I’ll be back soon. Oh and uh, I got some extra stuff in here-” he threw a large zip-lock bag on the other bed that seemed to contain a disposable assortment of all the toiletries a place like this didn’t provide. “Feel free to use whatever you want.” He went to the door, keys in hand. “I shouldn't be more than an hour. Oh and-” he took out a pen from the dresser drawer and wrote something down on a cheap pad of paper that the motel must have supplied by the night stand. “This is my number if you need to call me for some reason.” Just before Dean shut the door all the way he hesitated, and looked back inside. “You will be here when I get back, right?” His gaze was piercing.

“Where would I go?” Billy said cantankerously. 

Dean closed the door.

Billy's suspicions concerning Dean were returning, but despite all his mistrust right now a shower sounded more important than making sure someone wasn’t going to stab him in the back. He had only taken one shower since digging himself out of the pit he was in and his clothes were still dirty, stained irrevocably with monster blood and- probably a good amount of his own. He felt grimy. He had probably never smelled this filthy in his entire life. He took the plastic bag and started the shower, letting it run until the water started to steam, and then he divested himself of his torn up clothes. Jeans he had never intended to be fashionably ripped had well worn holes in them now. He let the hot water wash away a lifetime’s worth of anxiousness and dust and felt the smoothness come back to his hair as he worked conditioner into it, and then when everything necessary was done he simply sat down at the bottom of the shower and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed, letting the water run over him.

Dean had intended to take them directly to the bunker but once they had actually arrived in Lawrence he had realized what a stupid idea that was. He couldn’t just bring Billy to their safe house. Sam would kill him, hell, Billy might try and kill them. 

When he got there Sam wasn't at home. He called him on his cell but got no answer. He left a message- a short succinct message telling him to call him back and that he had found someone who was connected to the case. The details were probably better delivered in person. He collected the book, also against his better judgment, considered just taking a picture of the pages he needed but decided against it, grabbed a case of beer from the fridge and headed back to Billy. Overall it took about as long as he had predicted and he pulled into the motel with an uneasy feeling in his gut. He didn’t know just how wide spread those demodog things were, and there was a chance, even if it was slight, that they could have been followed. He wasn’t too concerned about Billy. During the trip Billy had explained that he only ever seemed to lose control during intense moments, moments of fear or adrenaline or extreme excitement of some kind. If that was true then leaving him alone with Pay-per-view TV reruns didn’t seem like too large a risk.

When he walked back into the room the first thing he noticed was the moisture in the air. The shower had clearly been used and steam was trickling out from under the bathroom door although there was no water running anymore. He set his things on the table. His gun was still carefully tucked in at his hip, now in a holster. He was about to announce that he was back when the bathroom door opened and Billy came out. In a towel. Just a towel. Dean did a double take and then quickly averted his eyes.

“Hey,” Billy said. 

“Hey.” Anything else Dean would have said seemed strangely inappropriate now, not that it would have been awkward normally but now that there was a naked man- well mostly naked- it seemed weird to just...speak. He set the case of beer on the table and would have offered one to Billy but the only person in a towel he had ever offered a beer to was Sam and that was just because they were family. Billy was suddenly next to him and Dean had no choice but to look at him- his face- look at his face. Just his face. Which he had shaved...Dean blinked once, harder than necessary. He had...done something to his hair? Dean wasn’t very well versed on how someone got a certain look to their hair, considering his own had been short and managed without even being touched very much his whole life but he got the impression Billy had at least blow dried it.

“Is that it?” Billy asked, looking at the very large dark book sitting on the round table.

“What? Uh, yeah. That’s it. That’s the book.” 

Billy stared at the book and Dean tried not to stare at Billy, but man it was a struggle. Billy looked different- _really_ different. Dean almost made a comment but decided not to. If this was the way Billy looked normally then he had looked a whole lot rougher earlier than Dean had realized. His hair was in big soft golden waves and his skin was smooth pretty much everywhere that Dean could linger long enough to see. He smelled like motel soap, and not at all like the dirty mess that he had been earlier. Billy looked down at himself, maybe noticing Dean’s attention, “Sorry- don’t really have a clean outfit,” he told him.

“Right,” Dean said, realizing he actually had a solution to the problem of Billy being half naked. He dug out a pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt from his bag. “Pretty sure those will fit.” He did not say that it was his own clothing he was offering. He was a little taller but for the most part they weren’t too different in size, either way it was all they had to work with for now. He handed them off to Billy. 

Billy was reaching out to touch the thick tome laying on the table and Dean slapped his hand onto its cover, sliding it a few inches away.

“It’s better if you don’t,” Dean said, his tone didn’t brook any argument. Billy didn’t give one. He arched an eyebrow at Dean and walked to the other side of the room to put on the clothes. He didn’t even go into the bathroom to do it. He pulled on the white v-neck shirt which fell a little loose on him, and stepped in the pants, pulling them up as far as they would go before he pulled the towel away. If there was anything to see Dean wouldn't have known, his eyes were firmly fixed on his beer now with his back to Billy. He took the cap off with the bottle opener on his keychain and sat down at the basic little table. 

“Is that... _skin_?” Billy asked and Dean saw his look was directed at the book.

He opened his mouth to say _yes_ but cocked his head and went, “ _Ehh,_ ” instead. It _was_ -in fact skin- human skin. It didn’t seem viable to mention that just now however.

“Deer skin, right?” 

“Something like that.” Dean gave him a tight smile.

“Yeah. I saw some shit in purgatory, for the record.”

“Oh, I bet you did.”

“You sound like you’ve been there.”

“I have. I told you, remember?”

Billy searched Dean’s face. “How? ”

“It’s uh- a long story.”

“Good thing I got nothin' but time, huh?”

“Let’s just focus on getting you fixed up, alright?”

“If you say so, chief.” Billy sat down in one of the thin wooden chairs and Dean offered him a beer. Billy looked at it with that same wonder Dean had seen in the diner. And then he used the edge of the table to slam the beer cap off. 

Dean raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment.

Billy raised his bottle. “Cheers to- whatever this is.”

 _Heh , _yeah alright,_ _Dean could drink to that. Their bottles clinked at the neck, both of them downed a good swig together. 

Billy’s tongue swept across his lips to catch the moisture and lingered at the corner of his lips as he read the label on the green bottle. Dean marveled at how he looked clean shaven now, someone might say handsome even. An unpredictable surge of _something_ , budding camaraderie assailed him as he watched the other man. Hopefully Hargrove didn’t fuck this up for them somehow.

Dean had read over the spell in the bunker. He knew this wasn’t going to be easy. He needed things he didn’t have. “Okay so, we’re gonna have to get the ingredients for this spell. Some of these things I have but most of them I don’t.”

“I’m sorry, did you say _spell_?”

“Yeah. What did you think was going to happen? You say a couple Hail Marys and you’re good?”

Billy hadn’t really known what to expect. But damn, beer tasted good after everything. He gave Dean a shrug. 

“Most of this is pretty standard. A lock of the afflicted’s hair, blood of the caster, but these spells…” Dean stared down at the pages with a furrowed brow and then he closed the book carefully and took a drink. Billy didn’t know Dean well but he knew when someone was trying not to look concerned. 

“What is it?”

“This book, it's complicated. It usually _wants_ something in return.”

“What, like as payment?” Billy let out a little chuckle.

Dean didn’t look amused. “Yeah.”

“I guess it is called the Book of the Damned, right? Not the Book of the Blessed.”

Dean stared at him, inspecting him sharply like Billy wasn’t there to see the way he looked at him. 

“What?”

“The thing you hold most dear,” Dean said in a deep serious tone.

“What?”

“That’s what it demands. _The thing you hold most dear._ ”

Billy wasn’t even sure he believed all this hocus pocus shit but he still felt spooked hearing Dean say those words. 

“The last part of the spell requires it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Usually it’s exactly what it sounds like. You have to give up the thing most important to you.”

Billy thought about the only thing he’d had even for a moment here, the Camaro. “Great well I already did that. What’s next?”

Dean didn’t look convinced. “This is a variation of another spell that I once went through in order to remove a cursed mark that nearly destroyed my soul... it cost the caster the heart of her first lover.”

Billy stared at him, his pupils were big and black bordered by that thin line of blue and he looked very disturbed. He said nothing. Behind the curtain across the window next to them the window was dark. When Dean looked away Billy chugged the rest of his beer in one go.

“Great, so what else?” Billy asked, not sounding so devil-may-care as he perhaps meant to.

“Something of _both worlds_.”

“The Demodog.”

“That might work.” Dean hoped it was that straightforward.

They were both lost in morbid contemplation when Dean’s cell rang abruptly. “Yello,” Dean said as he put it to his ear. It was Sam. Dean got up and went outside. 

Billy pressed close to the window to listen to Dean, irritated Dean was treating him with suspicion, like he couldn’t take a phone call in front of him. He could only hear the beginning of the conversation and Dean saying “Where have you been, man?” before he walked too far away to be discernible.

Billy looked down at the table. At the book. He leaned over and looked closely at it. The pages were all old and made out of some sort of leather, written in faded rust brown ink strange markings and sigils lined the pages with letters he didn’t recognize. As he stared at the book the edges of his vision started the blur, at first he simply thought he was being a lightweight and the beer was making his vision hazy but then the book started to pulse and the edges of his vision tunneled even more until there was an almost glowing aura around the book pulsing as if in time to his heartbeat. Black vine like tentacles crept up from under the table to slithered across the book possessively, tangling it up in a growing mass of tendrils and suddenly the door creaked open and they were gone in a blink. Billy fell back against his chair. He held in a groan. The book sat untouched on the table and everything was clear again. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“Everything alright?” Dean sounded suspicious again. 

“What? Yeah. Fine.”

If Dean looked like he didn’t believe him Billy was too busy trying to get his bearings to notice. “It’s late,” he heard Dean saying, “I’m sure you could use the rest, I know I could.”

“Are you putting me to bed right now?” He glanced up, still feeling a little woozy and trying to decide whether to mention what had just happened.

Dean hesitated. “Sorry but I’m beat.”

Billy was tired too now that he thought about it. He was absolutely beyond exhausted, but he knew what happened when he slept…

“There’s not much I can do tonight as far as this thing is concerned. Best bet we just get some rest and start fresh in the morning. I have some leads I can follow up then.”

“Yeah okay,” Billy mumbled.

Dean swept the book up from the table and into his arms. “If you need me I’m room eight right next door.”

Billy was surprised, although he shouldn’t have been, but for some reason he had thought that Dean was going to be sharing a room with him. There were two beds after all. 

Dean took two of the beers from the cardboard six pack case on the table, leaving the remaining two behind. “I’ll let you take care of those.”

“Thanks.”

“Night.”

Dean left. Billy looked around the empty room and felt the existential dread settling in on him. He decided to “take care of” as Dean had put it, the remaining drinks and watch television for a little while. He had a lot of catching up to do on current affairs anyway.


End file.
